Den ikoniske Lotus Elise Serie 1 bygget i Lotus-grundlæggeren Colin Chapmans ånd: "Simplify, then add lightness...". Verdens første bil med et aluminiumschassis der var limet sammen og produceret af Hydro Aluminium i Tønder. Vægten er nede på 690 kg.

Lotus Elise Serie 1 er altid blevet rost til skyerne af alle de førende magasiner. Top Gear skrev "One of the best handling cars in the universe". Fejrer i år sit 25 års jubilæum med udnævnelsen til "Future Classic" af Top Gear's Chris Harris, Evo magazine og Road & Track. "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. It's sublime!" 

Eller som wikipedia skriver:

The Lotus Elise is a two-seat, rear-wheel drive, mid-engined roadster conceived in early 1994 and released in September 1996 by the British manufacturer Lotus Cars. The Elise has a fibreglass body shell atop its bonded extruded aluminium chassis that provides a rigid platform for the suspension, while keeping weight and production costs to a minimum. It is capable of speeds up to 240 km/h (150 mph).[6] The Elise was named after Elisa Artioli, the granddaughter of Romano Artioli who was chairman of Lotus and Bugatti at the time of the car's launch.[7]

Min Elise er denne, som er modificeret og målt til 170 hk.

111S

A faster edition called the 111S, named after the Lotus type-number of the Elise (Type 111), was introduced in early 1999 and had the 1.8 Rover K-series engine also used in the Rover MGF. It featured a VVC system providing continuously variable lift and duration on the intake valves only. This technology produced a flatter torque curve from lower down the rev range and a declared 143 bhp (107 kW; 145 PS), a small but useful improvement over the standard 16 valve Rover 1.8 L K-series 118 bhp (88 kW; 120 PS) inline-four unit. Fitted with a closer ratio manual gearbox and lower ratio final drive, the acceleration was improved. Minor changes include more padding in the seats, headlamp covers, rear spoiler, cross drilled brake discs, alloy window winders and six-spoke wheels. The rear wheels being slightly wider than before necessitated the fitting of "spats" on the back of the rear wheel arches to comply with EU regulations. The 111S was also fitted with a "chipcutter" front grille.[14]

Som Top gear skriver med vanlig humør.

Astonishing handling, defiance of the 'more is better' mantra that ruins too many sports cars.

WHAT'S THE VERDICT?

"If you really, truly care about driving, the Lotus Elise is about as obvious an answer as water being wet and fire being hot"

f you really, truly care about driving, the essence of it, the sensations of tactile involvement at every level, the Lotus Elise is about as obvious an answer as water being wet and fire being hot. You might want to go for something more niche, more specialist, more characterful, but there's a very good reason why the Elise remains the yardstick, the reference point we start at when we look at anything else small, light and driver-focused. And driving-focused, come to think of it.

The Elise is an example of a commodity that's growing increasingly rare in the more democratically priced end of the car market – a machine designed for just one purpose. There's any number of limited-run manic-mobiles, each offering insane speed and track ferocity in exchange for six and seven figures' worth from your account. They attempt to tempt with an increasingly tired rhetoric – complicated driver aids, priapic bodywork and enough power to overturn Brexit. But then there's the Elise, too – the offer of a small, simple, usable and tenable sports car, ready to hit up a track day or just liven up the milk run.

The Elise is the antidote to (and the antithesis of) an automotive climate that pursues complexity in a perpetual game of feature-loading one-upmanship. Do we really need four-figure power outputs, active torque vectoring, four-wheel steering and multi-stage traction control? Does that really add to the driving experience?

Well, in case this liberal use of italics hasn't already given the answer away, of course we don't. Driving – the real, pure sensation of being wholly present and entirely responsible for the actions of a complex mechanical instrument – is only filtered and diluted by the addition of intermediaries between road surface and feet and fingertips.

So what's the answer? Perhaps it's something to do with simplifying and adding lightness...