The new Lotus F1 car is to be called the E20, as it will be the 20th car to be designed in Enstone under the Benetton, Renault and now Lotus names.
It had been referred to as the R32 – at least in Tweets from driver Romain Grosjean!
Team boss Eric Boullier explained: “Our naming of the chassis to recognise Enstone’s importance to the team’s evolution highlights our recognition of the contribution of the facility and the personnel who work tirelessly every year to produce the very best car possible.
“We certainly hope that this is the case with the E20 and we are looking forward to revealing the car to the world and seeing it out on track for the first time. There are a number of technical changes from last year and we have an exciting new driver line-up to extract the maximum from the E20 through the twenty Grands Prix of the 2012 season, including the 500th race for this team through its different incarnations. We hope that the E20 proves to be a performing Enstone design.”
Adam Cooper F1 
E20 after the twentieth car built in Enstone, or after someone’s love of EastEnders?
Oh, and I’ve just noticed your tweet about Boulier actively promoting the history of the team as going back to the Toleman era. Well that’s because he knows his team isn’t truly Lotus 😉 For me, the true Lotus team on the grid is still the Caterham team. I can’t support the Toleman/Benetton/Renault ‘Lotuses’, as much as that pains me to say so.
Just as Ferrari had to avoid trouble with ford after supposedly using their F150 pickup truck name, you’ll probably find that Volkswagen werent happy about lotus using the R32 designation.
E20, reminds me of E10, the rather unpopular new fuel….. 😉
Mmmh, haven’t quite a few engineers left Enstone to new destinations? I wonder if the naming of the car is a result of this or whether it will stop the bleeding…
Whenever I see this E20 I think water. Then I wake up.