Of course it's bad news from Lotus. That's the only kind of news we get from them these days. On the heels of the storied but troubled British company having to lay off a quarter of its workforce, we learn its last street legal model in the U.S. may be on the way out too.
That would be the Lotus Evora, at the moment the only Lotus you can buy and drive in America. The Elise and Exige haven't been sold new here for years because they're also not road legal anymore (though some dealers do sell track-only variants in extremely limited quantities.)
Car and Driver reports that regulations may also doom the aging Evora. The car got a 12-month exemption on a federal requirement to be fitted with smart airbags, but that exemption is about to end.
The magazine quotes "a highly placed source" in a U.S. dealer group as saying Lotus doesn't plan on re-engineering their car to meet the new standard, so that could mean an end to Evora sales.
In other words, get your Evora while you still can. Things continue to not look great for this automaker.