Best bit of yesterday’s press day at the motor show? Seeing how much better in the flesh Lotus’s new 2+2 sportscar looks than in the photographs.
All my old worries about this car disappeared the moment the covers came off only to be replaced by one new one when I heard it they were going to call it ‘Evora’.
Sadly few people I spoke to at the show thought it a good name for a Lotus. A great one for an early 1990s Korean concept car, a tropical disease, sandwich spread or a pharmacological ointment my colleagues opined, but not a Lotus. 
The hope is we all get used to it: I remember people getting pretty sniffy about ‘Elise’ back in 1996 and now we don’t even think about it. But can you imagine an owner waking one sunny weekend morning with a long journey on the cards, turning to his missus and saying: ‘Let’s take the Evora.’ Me neither.
Still it’s easy to criticise and rather more difficult to suggest something better. I’d prefer all exotics to be numbered rather than named as their looks and specification should speak for themselves, but if one must have a title I share the view of Rolls-Royce and Bentley that recycling a noble name 
from the past is infinitely preferable than plumping for some awkward computer-generated nonsense from the present.
‘Excel’ is one example that would have fitted the car’s 2+2 configuration while, at the same time, making a bold statement about its abilities. Still it’s all academic now: Evora it is and if it turns out to be as good to drive as it is to look at, I suspect they could rename it the Lotus Eggbreath and its customers would not care less.