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The Lotus Elise is 20 years old. In the Elise's case, though, it's truly deserved. The Lotus Elise first appeared in 1996 and revolutionized small sports car design with its lightweight extruded aluminum chassis and composite body.
The plainly named Lotus Elise (there’s no derivative budging) is the base
model, and gets a 1.6-litre Toyota engine with variable valve lift as well as
variable valve timing. That makes this the lowest-emitting petrol-powered
sports car currently on sale. A lightweight Elise CR also uses the new
1.6-litre engine, while the car is available in base, Sport, Touring and Sport
Touring trims.
The Lotus Elise S is powered by a
1.8-litre Toyota sourced engine, force fed by a Magnuson supercharger. That
made it easily the lightest performance car sold in this country.
Most Lotus Elise’s feature a
Toyota-sourced (and Yamaha-built) 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine. There's no
doubt the Lotus Elise is a special car -- for the money, you simply won't find
a more thrilling driving experience. Current Lotus Elise.
The Lotus Elise is a two-seat midengine roadster available in base and SC trim. Power for the Lotus Elise comes from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine mated to a six-speed manual transmission. The Toyota-sourced engine benefits from Lotus-designed intake and exhaust components and a tweaked engine controller. Should the standard Elise be inadequate, there's always the supercharged Elise SC, boasting a 220-hp version of the standard Elise's engine.
Interior accommodations are pure sports
car: Lightly padded composite sport seats provide plenty of support and
controls are simple enough to keep your attention on the road. Naturally, the
Elise's cockpit emphasizes driving above all else and there are minimal comfort
and storage features for longer road trips.
.jpg "2016 Lotus Elise car review")
Lotus introduced the Americanized "111R" version of the Elise in
2005, enabled by a three-year NHTSA exemption as the car had failed to meet
U.S. bumper regulations. The supercharged Elise SC debuted for 2008. For the
2011 model year, the Elise received some minor styling updates as well as a few
feature availability changes. A Roger Becker special edition Elise also
debuted, honoring the recently retired head of Lotus vehicle engineering.
The Elise uses a 1.6-litre Toyota engine,
but even though the car is light, its 134bhp isn't quite enough to excite. Come
up behind another car and you need a decent amount of space and planning before
you can get past, which is frustrating in a sports car.Ride & Handling5 out of 5
starsReview-OnRoad the Elise set new standards for cars of this type with its
superlative grip and a surprisingly comfortable ride.
The Lotus
Elise has come to represent everything that Lotus cars stand for. It's
lightweight, stripped-out, agile and communicative, making it one of the finest
handling cars on the road. Lotus now offers four versions of the little Elise. There's
the base Elise, the Else S, Elise S Cup and Elise S Cup R. The entry-level
model comes fitted with a 1.6-litre engine as standard while the S and S Cup
versions use a larger Toyota-sourced 217bhp 1.8-litre supercharged engine. It's
not the most refined, powerful or sonorous engine fitted to a sports car, but
with only 932kg to haul around you're never short on performance or
excitement.
The Elise is low, compact and stylish. Opt for the Elise S Cup and the exterior receives a racecar makeover. The Lotus Elise is available with a 1.6-litre 134bhp engine or a 1.8-litre 217bhp in the Elise S and S Cup. The Elise is also one of the few cars on the road with no power steering, which results in a fantastic accuracy and amount of feel through the wheel.
Add in its miniature proportions and the Elise is unquestionably
one of the most precise and agile sports cars around. The Elise is an
absolutely tiny car so practicality is very poor; in fact the only load area is
just 117 liters.
Go for the
standard Elise and the relatively small engine and lightweight body mean fuel
economy is an amazing 45mpg.
The idea of a car you can use for race track days is nothing new in 2014.
There’s a school of thought that says a big engine in a big car (typically a Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon) will make for a great day-to-day car as well as a weekend track-star. Also, since these cars were so often driven on race-tracks, crash damage was common.