Lotus has announced the end of production of the Elise, Exige and Evora sports cars. The trio were photographed on site with many of the Lotus team who contributed to the design, engineering, assembly and sales of the cars.

From 1996 to 2000, the first-generation Elise and Exige sports cars were built in a small assembly hall at Hethel alongside the Lotus Esprit. The current assembly lines, which were installed in 2000, will be dismantled and replaced with all new state-of-the-art facilities in support of the new Emira factory.

Full production of the Lotus Emira will begin from the start of 2022, after the prototype and test phases currently underway are completed, taking Lotus sports car production into an exciting, high-tech and semi-automated era, and increasing capacity up to 5,000 units per year on a single shift pattern.

The last examples of the Elise, Exige and Evora models are reserved for Lotus' growing heritage collection.