Lotus Elise
Most car manufacturers follow a fairly conservative
approach when developing new models; they have focus groups
and marketing departments to tell them what the modern
motorist really wants, which in most cases seems to be
airbags, greater space and the ability to survive 60 MPH
head-on collisions (presumably because at some point they
see themselves driving into another vehicle at such a
speed.) The end result of this is, of course, a dramatic
increase in vehicle mass. Cars such as the Volkswagen Golf
have almost doubled in their kerb weight over the past
twenty years.
There is another way, however. Forget the cupholders.
Forget staying dry during a heavy burst of rain. Forget even
the possibility of making a dignified exit from your vehicle
after parking it in a public place. All of these piffling
annoyances have been made irrelevant by the fact that you
are sitting behind the wheel of one of the very few modern
automotive icons – the Lotus Elise – which has earned its
place on The List by being both the antithesis of the modern
production car and the purest expression of modern
performance automotive engineering.
Conceived in 1994 and eventually released in 1996, the
Elise represented a return to Lotus’ roots of performance
through light weight, following the demise of the talented
but unprofitable front wheel drive Elan M100. It utilises
the traditional Lotus glass fibre body, but instead of being
hung over a steel backbone chassis, in the Elise it is
attached to a bonded aluminium structure that weighs only 65
KGs. This, together with the lightweight K Series engine, enables a kerb weight
that is around half of that of many modern sports cars, benefiting both efficiency and performance.
The interior resembles that of a race car; there are no
extraneous switches or dials, and even the stereo seems a
bit incongruous, like it was placed there as an afterthought
when someone at Lotus suddenly realised, at the eleventh
hour, that people may enjoy listening to music while they
drive. Not that they can, though; at speed the engine, wind and
tyre noise combine with innumerable rattles to create a
cacophony that only the most powerful of stereos will be
able to overcome.
You sit very low by modern standards, the narrow seats
and the wide sills, which restrict entry, suggest that this
is not a car for those whose eating habits veer towards the
deep fried. Twist the key and the modest 1.8 litre K series
engine barks into life unpromisingly (unless you have one of
the high performance derivatives, or an aftermarket
exhaust.) Wait for it to warm up, though, then gun it up to
the rev limiter and you will be rewarded with rapid
acceleration, even from the standard 118BHP car.
But it’s when you encounter a series of testing corners
that the Elise comes alive, and you begin to understand the
superlatives heaped on it over the years. There is a level
of communication from the unassisted steering that is
difficult to comprehend if you have been brought up on a
diet of lardy saloons and hot hatches. On a modern high
performance Audi, for example, you turn the wheel, there is
a slight increase in weighting, then you’re heading towards
the apex. You may feel changes in pitch and yaw, but this
information will be coming to you through the motion of the
car and your own sense of balance. The steering tells you
about as much about what the vehicle is doing as a
Playstation wheel does when you’re playing Grand Turismo.
In the Elise, on the contrary, the steering wheel
communicates through minute changes in weighting and feel,
exactly what is going on beneath the tyres’ contact patches,
and it does this in such a detailed way that you never feel
like you are fighting the car. Don’t think that it is
completely benign, though; drive it beyond your own
abilities and it won’t be long before you’re viewing a
rapidly approaching hedge through the rear screen. Driving
an Elise quickly requires you to be smooth with your inputs;
mistakes that you could easily get away with in many cars
will be punished harshly in the Lotus, especially in the
wet.
But this is the key to the car’s success, and its
position on The List; the Elise will always be the
aficionado’s choice, its uncompromising handling and almost
ascetic rejection of all luxuries ensuring that it will
never fall into the hands of the proverbial hairdresser.
