Background
If the aim of the Lotus Elan M100 was to save the company, the Elise was the car that actually managed to do so. First unveiled in 1996 and due to cease production in 2021, the original Elise weighs as little as 723kgs, which is crazily light.
This absence of mass was achievable through two main engineering strands: the first was to use aluminium to build the car. Extruded aluminium sections were glued and rivetted together and then reinforced by flat aluminium panels. Aluminium is strong and light anyway, but it makes for a particularly light but stiff structure when it is used in this way, allowing the suspension to do its thing without being undermined by a constantly flexing chassis that has a tendency to alter the geometry.
The second strand was to give next to nothing in terms of equipment. This latter trait being entirely in keeping with Colin Chapman’s philosophy of “simplify, and then add lightness.”
Designed by Julian Thomson and Richard Rackham, the original cars were powered by a Rover K-Series engine - but even the 118bhp of the first models gave a power-to-weight ratio that was sufficient to see 62mph coming up in around six seconds.
And while the Elise’s top speed was a relatively poor-on-paper 126mph, the way it got there was what hooked owners, and continues to do so to this day. Knee-high to a grasshopper, the Elise connected the driver to the road in a way that no-one bar Caterham owners had experienced for a very long time.
And boy, do they handle. A low centre-of-gravity, supple but firmly damped suspension, and an absence of mass combine with super-direct steering to give a level of handling and road holding that's streets ahead of most road cars.
Its tyres are narrower than you might expect, but they grip hard and when they do eventually let go they do so in a progressive way that is easy to catch. Drivers need only a modicum of talent to drive an Elise quickly: it’s the ones with no talent and a lack of common sense that tend to come unstuck.
