The Lotus Europa is a 2-door coupe from Lotus, built from 1966 to 2010, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 1470 cc Renault A-Type engine#AxK. Ron Hickman / Russell Carr (Europa S) drew it.
The background
The Lotus Europa name is used on two distinct mid-engine GT cars built by British automobile manufacturer Lotus Cars. The original Europa and its variants comprise the Lotus Types 46, 47, 54, 65 and 74, and were produced between 1966 and 1975. The name was later revived in the Type 121 Europa S, a sports car based on the Lotus Elise produced from 2006 to 2010.
The engineering
Power comes from 1470 cc Renault A-Type engine#AxK; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1350 to. It shifts through a 4-speed manual transmission / manual / 5-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 92 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Lotus Esprit (Europa only); assembly was at Hethel, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Lamborghini Miura, the Alfa Romeo Spider, the Dodge Charger — show what else the money bought that year. Its Lotus stablemates include the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 101.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Lotus Europa — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.