Why Lotus Needed Toyota’s Discontinued V6 To Keep The Emira’s Gas Engine Alive
Toyota stopped building V6 engines for the Camry in 2024, ending a long run for the 3.5-liter 2GR family in America’s best-selling sedan. Lotus didn’t let the engine disappear. The Emira SE V6 runs a supercharged version of that same architecture, now making 400 horsepower and 310 lb-ft, paired with a six-speed manual the Camry never offered.
It’s an odd pairing on paper: a mid-engined British sports car borrowing its heart from a family sedan built for comfort, not cornering. Building a bespoke engine from scratch no longer pencils out for a brand that sells in the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands. So Lotus went shopping in Toyota’s discontinued parts bin instead.
What Lotus Actually Changed Under The Hood
The Emira uses the 2GR-FE, a close cousin to the 2GR-FKS that powered the last V6 Camry. Lotus made substantial changes. An Edelbrock supercharger provides the biggest jump in output, while Lotus swapped the stock intake for its own larger-flowing design and overhauled the exhaust to match. The ECU was reworked to manage the supercharger alongside the new breathing setup, extending the rev ceiling to 6,800 rpm.
The result is 400 horsepower and 310 lb-ft, a healthy jump over the Camry V6’s 301 hp and 267 lb-ft.
A Supplier Relationship That Reveals The Real Economics
Toyota hasn’t fully retired the 2GR family. It discontinued the engine for mainstream models like the Camry but still builds a limited run for niche applications, Lotus among them. That’s the quieter story here: a mass-market automaker keeping a shuttered engine line alive specifically to supply a tiny sports car maker that couldn’t justify developing its own V6 from the ground up.
Now it looks like the only realistic path for a company building a few thousand cars a year, especially with emissions rules tightening everywhere a supercharged six-cylinder might want to sell.
The Manual V6 Sports Car Is Becoming An Endangered Species
Porsche discontinued the 718 Boxster and Cayman in 2025, ending one of the last purely combustion, manual-equipped sports car lines of their kind. The 911 lineup still offers a stick, but the broader trend across the segment points toward hybridized powertrains and shrinking take rates for manual gearboxes.
Against that backdrop, the Emira SE V6 reads like a holdout. It pairs pure ICE power with a six-speed manual and rear-drive layout at $112,900, a price that looks reasonable given how few cars still offer this exact combination. Euro 7 emissions regulations are coming, and Lotus hasn’t ruled out going fully electric eventually. Nothing about the Emira V6’s future is guaranteed, but for now it remains in full production, built on an engine that technically shouldn’t still exist.
Whether Lotus keeps building it depends on how long Toyota keeps the 2GR line running and how hard emissions regulators push. For buyers who still want a manual, naturally aspirated-feeling six-cylinder in a mid-engined chassis, the window may not stay open much longer.
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