SATNAV, cruise control, electric seats, and a folding metal roof. These are some of things Lotus' latest Elise doesn't have, and it's all the better for it.
Clamber into the 1.6S verison of the Norfolk company's evergreen sports car - and it can be a struggle if you've got the roof up and you're not the athletic type - and on the face of it you don't get much for your £29,230, although the air con and Alpine stereo are luxuries owners of the original 1996 Elise wouldn't have got. The money, as befits a company famed for making its cars as light as possible, has been spent not on toys and gadgets, but making the two-seater roadster as thrilling as possible.
The mid-mounted Toyota engine, for instance, might only be 1.6 litres, but because it's breathed on by Lotus Performance and has so little weight to push around, the Elise is almost frighteningly quick when you really put your foot down, dealing with the sprint to sixty miles an hour in just 6.7 seconds. But the joy with the little Lotus is not how fast it goes, but how it goes fast.
You get the sense that you don't really need to slow down for the bends because it corners so capably, going exactly where you want it to while giving you an endless stream of communication through the tiny steering wheel, which goes without power assistance to give you even more feedback. Light, loud and low to the ground, the Elise is more like a four-wheeled motorbike than a car.
If I had to use a two-seater sports car every day I'd plump for the softer and more easily accessible Mazda MX-5, partly because it'd provide a smaller smile more of the time, but mainly because doing everyday things, like going to the shops, would take the edge of just what a special car the Elise is, which would be my choice as a second car for high days and holidays.
It's an upcoming classic you'd want to leave for sunny days and blasts along the B-roads, because at doing this the frantically fun Lotus is hard to beat.
As published in The Champion on March 16, 2011
