Porsche showed the way, and almost everyone has followed suit: there is now hardly a sports car manufacturer without an SUV.
If Ferrari brings the Purosangue this year, then it's McLaren and Lotus who follow the pure doctrine.
And there, too, the bastions are crumbling.
Because at least Lotus is now also going with fashion and pushing into the mud or at least into everyday life - and has now pulled the cloth from the Eletre, which is to be the first SUV of the brand to be launched next year.
But if you break a taboo, then right: Lotus does not therefore compete with any ordinary off-road vehicle, but celebrates the Eletre as the first hyper-SUV and climbs to the top.
Of course, like all Lotus models, the rather aerodynamic hum of power drives exclusively electrically, in the spirit of the new era.
For the company boss Matt Windle, "Hyper" does not just stand for the more than 600 hp, which in the electric world are only upper average anyway.
But the other positions in the vehicle registration document also want to be “hyper”: a top speed of more than 260 km/h, for example, a sprint value of less than three seconds, a battery with over 100 kWh, a range of more than 600 kilometers and a charging capacity of 350 kW, with which the electricity flows for 400 kilometers in less than 20 minutes.
Lotus has only one point in common with Porsche & Co.: The price should start at around 120,000 euros and thus be closer to a Cayenne than a Lamborghini Urus, which the Eletre looks suspiciously similar to.
Only that he doesn't appear so grotesque, but rather futuristic.
The tender little plant of hope
However, the Eletre is not only remarkable because it is the first SUV for Lotus and because it carries the trend towards something “hyper” from sports cars into a new segment.
As unusual as the extendable lidar sensors in the roof and flanks may be, it still needs the software and, above all, approval for autonomous driving and also customers who want to hand over the wheel in a Lotus of all places.
Rather, the Eletre stands for the tender seed of hope that Geely sown five years ago when it entered Hethel and that is now slowly growing and thriving.
Because the billions of Chinese who have already kept Volvo alive, created Polestar and supported Daimler are apparently the right fertilizer to lead the withered sports car manufacturer to a new heyday: They not only made the hyper sports car Evija and the Eletre possible .
With Chinese money and a new development center as well as a new plant, both in Wuhan of all places, three other series are also maturing, all of which are based on a new electrical architecture and are intended to gradually reduce the price, while in return the quantities are going up.
For example, a four-door coupe is on the agenda for the new year, which should be in a league with models like the Mercedes EQS, before an electric SUV in the upper middle class and a new sports car are to come.
So far, Lotus has only produced in the mostly low four-digit range, but the first SUV alone is to be built in the high five-digit numbers.
And that's per year.
It is not for nothing that the new plant in China has a capacity for 150,000 cars.
No, as far and as willingly as the Brits now look to the future with Geely's help, they have not forgotten the past.
At least not yet.
Because even if the legendary lightweight roadster Elise danced its last dance last year and Geely Lotus wants to turn it into a purely electric luxury brand, the British were allowed to develop a conventional platform again and build a sports car on it again according to old fathers' custom, the when Emira goes on sale this summer.
After all, a bit of wild growth must also be allowed in a blossoming lotus garden.