L O T U S E M I R A
A farewell to combustion engines from one of the worlds most legendary car brands, the Lotus Emira is a display of automotive purity and mechanical bliss.
There's a 3.5-liter supercharged V6 right behind your head, screaming, while in the rearview mirror a wastegate actuator shakes with every stab of the throttle. The shifter linkage is purposefully exposed behind sheer mesh in the hollow center console, and the steering is sublime, telepathic even. These Brits know how to tune suspension... the grip, the balance -- both immense, making the limit of adhesion a thrill to find.
For Lotus’ last dance with gas, the Emira is an exit song we’ll remember. Its beauty and capability, its awkwardness… exterior lines designed in science and refined with art. The transmission is heavy and clunky at times, but somehow the Emira romances you with every gear shift, yet pains you with the heartbreaking reality that cars won’t be made like this for much longer – we’re lucky to have it at all.
Together, with Recom Farmhouse’s NY studio, we embraced reflections, shapes, highlights and shadows, and removed the distraction of color in favor of a monochromatic film noir vibe. We wanted to create a set of images to look back on, from a different time; when sports cars had combustion engines in them, made noise and had smells -- when they vibrated with character.
