We have it good, right? Cars come with heated this, cooled that, TV, satellite radio, and USB ports of varying shapes and sizes to power slabs that can display information, play music, or transport you to another world. Cars these days are great.
Except they’re not. They’re all awful imprecise lumps full of crap we don’t need. The reason we know this is because the Series 1 Lotus Elise exists, a car that does away with extraneous nonsense and keeps only the good stuff.
Flung at the world at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Elise was something of a return to the purity of Lotus’ roots. The tiny car was based around a new bonded extruded aluminum chassis, with fiberglass body panels, new lightweight brakes, and a new lightweight motor. It showed that you didn’t need huge brawn and high price tags to turn heads. And, though both the concept Audi TT and Ferrari F50 were at the same show taking a large chunk of the limelight, the Elise grabbed headlines all over the planet.
As a package, it was pretty alluring, a simple handling-biased low-power sports car for the modern age, making the likes of Caterham look positively antiquated (which it is, by design, but… hey). It weighed just shy of 1600lbs, about as much as a Big Gulp.
As layouts go, Lotus got it right for the Elise: engine in the middle, drive at the rear, and a wheel at the extremes of each corner. The chosen motor, a 1.8-liter Rover K Series, was light (and would develop a rep for head gasket failure), kicking out a modest 118 bhp and 122 lb-ft. Lotus said that was enough to get it from 0-60 in 5.8 seconds and to over 120 mph. Now, while 5.8 seconds to 60 is respectable for today, for a small sports car in the mid-Nineties that’s some solid grunt. Admittedly, you’d go slower after a big lunch, or with a friend on board, but that’s not the point. New Metal Matrix Composite (MMC) brakes cut weight while increasing braking power, too. They did, however, add cost. It was a feather, but one made of razorblades and excitement.
The shape, penned by current Jaguar design boss Julian Thomson, was wild for its time. Swoops, curves, and haunches everywhere. Pretty but delicate (don’t hit it with anything heavy and blunt lest you want a big wait for a new one, and a big bill), its shell was a far cry from the Miatas of the day. Though the Miata, at least, made some attempt at luxury. The newest car from Hethel did not. Inside there are no carpets; no air conditioning; and seats that, while leather-clad, are so thin you worry about bending them by sitting on them. Lotus did see fit to include a stereo, but don’t bother trying to listen to it while driving. Both the steering wheel and gear stick (a five-speed, none of that heavy ‘make life easy’ automatic nonsense here) look delicate enough to snap if ever used in anger. There are no carpets to speak. It is neither soft nor fluffy.
It’s also a huge pain to get in and out of. A strong chassis with no roof needs lots of reinforcement, which means big ol’ door sills. As the doors themselves are tiny, you need to be half decent at yoga to get in and out with any sort of dignity. Of course, it’s easier with the roof removed, but getting the soft top on and off is, to be suitably British about things, faff (and very much improved for the Series 2 onward). Mailbox gymnastics it is.
Firing up the Elise causes the revvy four-banger to echo around the tiny cabin. The controls, though fragile in appearance, are all decently chunky to play with. For the most part, anyway; this is where you learn about the stick shift, which is so short-throw you’ll wonder whether you missed the gate. You didn’t. With a light clutch, you ease yourself away and discover, after the gentlest of tickles on the gas pedal, that you don’t ever need more than 118bhp. The thing flies. It’s not fast in the same sense of a turbo car, but it’s very, very quick. The motor sounds urgent, the speed rises neatly, but you never feel it’s going too fast. Dropping the clutch and shifting up and up and up is easy, the K Series firing its way up the range with a delicious quickness. When you need to slow, the MMC brakes are solid, taking some hard work to lock up. They can take an unholy amount of abuse, too, thanks to both their makeup and how light the car is. Lap after lap they’ll keep working just fine. When it comes time to downshift, the pedals are close enough that a decent heel-and-toe downshift is a doddle. The thing was very obviously designed to be driven hard as often as takes your fancy.
The party piece, though, is the steering. It’s sublime; unassisted, and with the wheel so close to the fronts that every minor movement and imperfection is sent right up to your fingertips. Outside of a race car you won’t find anything quite as pure. There’s no hint of delay between input and action; simply point this car at a corner and it glides around. As it does so, the suspension leans ever so slightly; the springs aren’t rock hard like those of modern sports cars, but softish. You’ll feel a pothole, but you won’t start swearing at the odd lump and bump.
Early Elises were known for being a touch jumpy, but on decent rubber it’s got grip aplenty. Its limit is far higher than yours, unless you’re intentionally driving like a moron.
The original Lotus Elise is a truly outstanding car. It’s no surprise that it found so many fans all over the world, and it did so without the electronic frippery that we’ve come to rely on today. And, hey, it’s 25 years old in 2021. Time to get one imported.
