2000_SI
04-25-2006, 10:40 AM
Taken from MSN Auto (http://en.autos.sympatico.msn.ca/advice/standardart.aspx?contentid=4023089)
A full assessment and first drive of the tiny, ultra-lightweight and exceptionally quick and agile mid-engine sports car from Lotus, now finally available in Canada.
The incredible lightness
of being Lotus…
"Adding lightness''.
According to Nick Adams, chief engineer for the Elise family of Lotus sports cars, that is the key to his charges' performance.
Nothing new there; even Henry Ford realized that when it came to car engineering, weight was the enemy of just about everything - acceleration, ride, handling, braking, economy.
And while at least some car companies pay lip service to this goal, with aluminium, magnesium or composite components here and there, we still have 'way too many six thousand pound trucks on our roads - some built by sports car makers who otherwise espouse lightness.
Can you spell "hypocrisy'', boys and girls?
No such worries with Lotus - their Elise weighs just 899 kg. That's 1982 pounds.
Wow.
Long Journey to North America
The Elise was introduced in 1996, but it took almost a decade to get it federalized for US production (sales started there in July 2004) and another year-plus to pass Transport Canada's additional requirements. (Really, Ottawa - I'm as nationalistic as the next guy, probably more so. But do Canadians really die in ways which are unique to us?
Surely as long as the speedo is converted to kilometres, whatever works for the Americans should be OK for us. Especially for a car that's only going to sell in the low hundreds of units per year. Can't you find something more valuable to spend our tax dollars on?)
In any event, Elise is finally here.
At first blush, a 190 horsepower two-seat sports car which costs about twice that of another similarly-powered two-seat sports car, the Mazda MX-5 Miata, sounds like a dicey proposition.
If you feel that way, buy a Miata - you'll absolutely love it.
But if you don't want to see yourself coming down the street every time you take the long way to the milk store, if you truly value the most intense personal relationship with the pavement that you can get from a car which you can buy new from a dealership, and particularly if your idea of a great time on a weekend is to take your car to the race track for some real driving, then the Elise might just be your ride.
A Revolutionary Chassis
The tiny two-seater uses an advanced aluminium and composite chassis bonded and riveted together, with plastic/fibreglass body panels.
It's an open car, with an extremely clever soft top that you roll across the car after inserting two fibreglass braces between the windshield header and roll hoop: Simple, quick and light.
A hardtop panel is also available for winter driving. You'll want winter tires though.
The suspension is all-independent of course - double wishbones at each corner. The ventilated cross-drilled four-wheel disc brakes have a Conti-Teves ABS system co-engineered by Lotus.
Power by Toyota
A Toyota Celica GTS engine is fitted sideways behind the seats. Prior to the 2006 model year, the only change Lotus made to it was the cam upon which the throttle cable operated - Lotus wanted a more linear reaction than Toyota did.
For 2006 Toyota applied an electronic throttle to achieve LEV2 (Low-Emissions Vehicle) status for their applications of this engine, which allowed Lotus to tailor the throttle response curve more to their liking.
Toyota would not let Lotus use their engine management software for competitive reasons, but Lotus didn't mind. They again applied their own expertise to match the output more to their own car.
The six-speed gearbox is also GTS-based, but with ratios chosen to be as close to each other as possible for maximal acceleration.
More than Snug
Don't even bother thinking about the Elise if you're much over 6' 2" or 200 pounds - you probably won't fit into the car.
Your passenger better be small too - first, because even a 175-pound buddy increases the car's weight by almost ten per cent, with a noticeable degradation in the car's performance.
Second, the cabin is narrow, and even wasp-waisted types will be rubbing elbows, especially during gear shifting.
Speaking of light, you'll be travelling light too, because while Lotus claims the Elise has more cargo volume than the Miata, the opening just aft of the engine is tiny.
The US government has established that if a car has a big enough trunk to carry a standard-sized dummy intended to represent a toddler of a certain age, then the car must have an internal trunk release mechanism. Lotus is proud that two such dummies fit in their trunk; a release catch - lifted from a Pontiac, but presumably not the Solstice - is therefore fitted.
More Change in Canada
The base price for an Elise is $58,550 (plus $1,415 freight charge). Lotus confesses that this is a bit more than the US/Canada exchange rate difference would suggest, but say that the engineering changes to meet Canadian standards, plus the higher cost of importing cars to Canada, not to mention amortizing advertising and marketing costs over a disproportionately small number of cars and dealerships, accounts for the differential; certainly if they thought they could sell more cars profitably at a lower price, they would.
For a car which is expected to sell in the 150 - 200 unit range in Canada, you have an amazingly long option list to tailor your car to your own preferences.
Check every box and you'll come out somewhere on the wrong side of seventy-five grand; early Canadian orders are running in the mid-60s.
The interior can be ordered in various levels of Spartan, with cloth seats and minimal carpeting as standard, and several upgrades including leather as options.
The optional power windows actually weigh a couple of kilos less than the base wind-up units - wonder why Lotus doesn't make them standard?
New seats for 2006 offer ProBax padding with anatomically-correct multi-density foams strategically placed to enable elimination of the former manual pump-up lumbar support adjustment.
Sounds like a downgrade, but I tried an older Elise, and the new seats are superior.
You better like the seating position though, because the only adjustment left is fore-and-aft.
Especially on base-trimmed cars, there are lots of exposed aluminium and composite surfaces on display in the car, and you'll catch the occasional whiff of fibreglass resin. Part of the charm, I guess, to see exactly what your car is made of.
You might well question a car so dedicated to low weight even offering air conditioning, let alone as standard equipment. But Lotus understands that most Elise drivers do want some creature comforts. "Delete air'' (adding 10 kg of lightness…) is a $310 option, but don't think about changing your mind. It is technically possible (barely) but commercially infeasible to retrofit it afterwards - the lines and hoses are bonded right into the car's chassis when it is built.
You also get a fairly good audio system - single CD player; four speakers - with a couple of optional upgrades, including mp3 capability and XM satellite radio.
Cruise control? Er, no…
Fine Tuning for Handling
The most important options for serious drivers are the two levels of suspension upgrades. The Sport Pack adds larger forged wheels, even sportier tires, and stiffer springs and dampers. Not surprisingly, it saves about 8 kg of unsprung weight.
The Track Pack adds adjustable Bilstein dampers, a five-way adjustable front anti-roll bar, a rear suspension tower brace, fittings on the roll hoop to attach a five-point racing harness, and a "Petty bar'' - a diagonal brace from the roll hoop into the passenger footwell for additional stiffness.
Lotus actually discourages Elise buyers from opting for the Torsen limited-slip differential, unless they'll be doing lots of parking-lot autocross work, where balanced side-to-side grip out of low-speed corners can be critical to a good time.
In most other cases, the LSD causes the car to understeer, or push, too much, and reduces steering feel and precision.
Hence, the LSD can only be ordered with the traction control system to claw back some of those disadvantages.
The traction control, which can be ordered without the LSD as well, determines when the optimum grip level - about seven per cent slippage - is being exceeded, and cuts fuel randomly to the cylinders until order is restored.
I tried four different Elise variants - base, Sport Pack, Track Pack, and LSD/traction control.
Firing up an Elise requires pressing a button in the key fob to deactivate the anti-theft engine immobilizer, turning the key in the steering column slot, then hitting a separate starter button to the left of the steering wheel. Unnecessarily fussy, and engineer Nick Adams agrees.
"We buy a perfectly good ignition switch from a supplier with the starter function built right in, just like 99 per cent of cars on the road,'' he groaned.
"But the marketing guys decided that if the Bentley Continental and the Honda S2000 have a separate starter button then we must too.''
Win some, lose some…
Adams won 'way more than he lost.
Because the Elise is just about the purest driving experience you can get in a car that can be licensed for the road.
Why? It's that 899 kg thing again.
The 190-horse engine propels the car from rest to 100 km/h in about 5 seconds. That's sensational for any car, but with less than 200 ponies?
The gearbox is as direct as you'll find this side of a racing car, although it is a bit notchy, and I occasionally had trouble locating second gear from third.
No race-car worries about the clutch though; it is quick but light, and easy to manage.
Elise doesn't have power-assisted steering because it doesn't even come close to needing it. Changing direction requires little more than thinking about it.
Astonishing Agility
The car turns on a dime and leaves a nickel change. The differences in the suspension set-ups were a bit hard to detect in reasonably quick road driving - the base car's thinner tires do understeer slightly more; the limited slip differential does exacerbate this feeling - but you need a closed track to safely explore this car's limits.
Lotus laid on a fast slalom course for us, where the traction control car could be heard burp-burp-burping along as the power was intermittently cut. Otherwise, the intervention was so benign as to be nearly undetectable.
The ride quality is even pretty decent, because the springs don't have to be rock-hard to support any excess avoirdupois, especially when cornering hard.
The brakes are about as close to hand-of-God as you're likely to encounter. ABS is standard - while Lotus doesn't go in for technical frippery for its own sake, they aren't Morgan either…
The proximity of trunk and engine didn't seem to affect the temperature of the cargo room; although the bulkhead between the two cavities flexes easily when you wiggle it, the insulation must be pretty good because my briefcase didn't get unduly hot during my test drives.
What about quality? With a Lotus, you have to ask.
Nick Adams noted, "We are a very small company, and we only have so much money to spend on development. You can't of course cut corners on safety, and our car is very strong and performs very well in crash tests.
"But I will place my emphasis on dynamics and reliability. I mean, if a trim panel rattles, the car will still get you home. Not that we ignore trim panel rattles!''
Adams also noted that following a recent track day at Lime Rock Connecticut, there were several broken Japanese, Italian and German sports cars, but all the Elises drove home.
"Again,'' said Adams, "the light weight helps. It just puts less stress on all the components.''
More Models Coming?
Speaking of developments, what about other variants on the Elise platform?
Adams says they're looking at Canadianizing the even more hard-edged, track-friendly Exige coupe, available as of this year in the US, but question whether the small Canadian market could justify the expense.
The Europa coupe, introduced at this year's Geneva Auto Show, is intended to be more of a Grand Touring car. Because of its European Opel engine, Lotus has no plans to bring it to North America - odd, given that we tend to be more candy-butt about our cars than Europeans, and you'd think the more comfortable Europa might find a market. (If Lotus needs a 240-plus turbo horsepower in a North America-emissions-friendly compact four-cylinder engine they should chat up Mazda about their CX-7 motor…).
Lotus has just three dealers in Canada, in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. They know all about the big money in Calgary; their Vancouver dealer is looking at supporting that market, but Lotus might have to make an Elise SUV or pick-up for those cowboys…
(My God - why do I even mention things like that?)
Summing Up
Any car is a compromise, emphasizing certain features over others. How successful a car is can be judged on how well it achieves what it intends.
On that basis, the Elise is a remarkable piece. Lotus has aimed for a car that stresses handling and driving feel, but not at the expense of beating its driver up.
They happily admit it isn't for everyone. But if you share these objectives, all you have to do is study that options list, choose your colour, write the cheque and wait about six weeks to three months, depending on the complexity of your order.
You won't regret it.
A full assessment and first drive of the tiny, ultra-lightweight and exceptionally quick and agile mid-engine sports car from Lotus, now finally available in Canada.
The incredible lightness
of being Lotus…
"Adding lightness''.
According to Nick Adams, chief engineer for the Elise family of Lotus sports cars, that is the key to his charges' performance.
Nothing new there; even Henry Ford realized that when it came to car engineering, weight was the enemy of just about everything - acceleration, ride, handling, braking, economy.
And while at least some car companies pay lip service to this goal, with aluminium, magnesium or composite components here and there, we still have 'way too many six thousand pound trucks on our roads - some built by sports car makers who otherwise espouse lightness.
Can you spell "hypocrisy'', boys and girls?
No such worries with Lotus - their Elise weighs just 899 kg. That's 1982 pounds.
Wow.
Long Journey to North America
The Elise was introduced in 1996, but it took almost a decade to get it federalized for US production (sales started there in July 2004) and another year-plus to pass Transport Canada's additional requirements. (Really, Ottawa - I'm as nationalistic as the next guy, probably more so. But do Canadians really die in ways which are unique to us?
Surely as long as the speedo is converted to kilometres, whatever works for the Americans should be OK for us. Especially for a car that's only going to sell in the low hundreds of units per year. Can't you find something more valuable to spend our tax dollars on?)
In any event, Elise is finally here.
At first blush, a 190 horsepower two-seat sports car which costs about twice that of another similarly-powered two-seat sports car, the Mazda MX-5 Miata, sounds like a dicey proposition.
If you feel that way, buy a Miata - you'll absolutely love it.
But if you don't want to see yourself coming down the street every time you take the long way to the milk store, if you truly value the most intense personal relationship with the pavement that you can get from a car which you can buy new from a dealership, and particularly if your idea of a great time on a weekend is to take your car to the race track for some real driving, then the Elise might just be your ride.
A Revolutionary Chassis
The tiny two-seater uses an advanced aluminium and composite chassis bonded and riveted together, with plastic/fibreglass body panels.
It's an open car, with an extremely clever soft top that you roll across the car after inserting two fibreglass braces between the windshield header and roll hoop: Simple, quick and light.
A hardtop panel is also available for winter driving. You'll want winter tires though.
The suspension is all-independent of course - double wishbones at each corner. The ventilated cross-drilled four-wheel disc brakes have a Conti-Teves ABS system co-engineered by Lotus.
Power by Toyota
A Toyota Celica GTS engine is fitted sideways behind the seats. Prior to the 2006 model year, the only change Lotus made to it was the cam upon which the throttle cable operated - Lotus wanted a more linear reaction than Toyota did.
For 2006 Toyota applied an electronic throttle to achieve LEV2 (Low-Emissions Vehicle) status for their applications of this engine, which allowed Lotus to tailor the throttle response curve more to their liking.
Toyota would not let Lotus use their engine management software for competitive reasons, but Lotus didn't mind. They again applied their own expertise to match the output more to their own car.
The six-speed gearbox is also GTS-based, but with ratios chosen to be as close to each other as possible for maximal acceleration.
More than Snug
Don't even bother thinking about the Elise if you're much over 6' 2" or 200 pounds - you probably won't fit into the car.
Your passenger better be small too - first, because even a 175-pound buddy increases the car's weight by almost ten per cent, with a noticeable degradation in the car's performance.
Second, the cabin is narrow, and even wasp-waisted types will be rubbing elbows, especially during gear shifting.
Speaking of light, you'll be travelling light too, because while Lotus claims the Elise has more cargo volume than the Miata, the opening just aft of the engine is tiny.
The US government has established that if a car has a big enough trunk to carry a standard-sized dummy intended to represent a toddler of a certain age, then the car must have an internal trunk release mechanism. Lotus is proud that two such dummies fit in their trunk; a release catch - lifted from a Pontiac, but presumably not the Solstice - is therefore fitted.
More Change in Canada
The base price for an Elise is $58,550 (plus $1,415 freight charge). Lotus confesses that this is a bit more than the US/Canada exchange rate difference would suggest, but say that the engineering changes to meet Canadian standards, plus the higher cost of importing cars to Canada, not to mention amortizing advertising and marketing costs over a disproportionately small number of cars and dealerships, accounts for the differential; certainly if they thought they could sell more cars profitably at a lower price, they would.
For a car which is expected to sell in the 150 - 200 unit range in Canada, you have an amazingly long option list to tailor your car to your own preferences.
Check every box and you'll come out somewhere on the wrong side of seventy-five grand; early Canadian orders are running in the mid-60s.
The interior can be ordered in various levels of Spartan, with cloth seats and minimal carpeting as standard, and several upgrades including leather as options.
The optional power windows actually weigh a couple of kilos less than the base wind-up units - wonder why Lotus doesn't make them standard?
New seats for 2006 offer ProBax padding with anatomically-correct multi-density foams strategically placed to enable elimination of the former manual pump-up lumbar support adjustment.
Sounds like a downgrade, but I tried an older Elise, and the new seats are superior.
You better like the seating position though, because the only adjustment left is fore-and-aft.
Especially on base-trimmed cars, there are lots of exposed aluminium and composite surfaces on display in the car, and you'll catch the occasional whiff of fibreglass resin. Part of the charm, I guess, to see exactly what your car is made of.
You might well question a car so dedicated to low weight even offering air conditioning, let alone as standard equipment. But Lotus understands that most Elise drivers do want some creature comforts. "Delete air'' (adding 10 kg of lightness…) is a $310 option, but don't think about changing your mind. It is technically possible (barely) but commercially infeasible to retrofit it afterwards - the lines and hoses are bonded right into the car's chassis when it is built.
You also get a fairly good audio system - single CD player; four speakers - with a couple of optional upgrades, including mp3 capability and XM satellite radio.
Cruise control? Er, no…
Fine Tuning for Handling
The most important options for serious drivers are the two levels of suspension upgrades. The Sport Pack adds larger forged wheels, even sportier tires, and stiffer springs and dampers. Not surprisingly, it saves about 8 kg of unsprung weight.
The Track Pack adds adjustable Bilstein dampers, a five-way adjustable front anti-roll bar, a rear suspension tower brace, fittings on the roll hoop to attach a five-point racing harness, and a "Petty bar'' - a diagonal brace from the roll hoop into the passenger footwell for additional stiffness.
Lotus actually discourages Elise buyers from opting for the Torsen limited-slip differential, unless they'll be doing lots of parking-lot autocross work, where balanced side-to-side grip out of low-speed corners can be critical to a good time.
In most other cases, the LSD causes the car to understeer, or push, too much, and reduces steering feel and precision.
Hence, the LSD can only be ordered with the traction control system to claw back some of those disadvantages.
The traction control, which can be ordered without the LSD as well, determines when the optimum grip level - about seven per cent slippage - is being exceeded, and cuts fuel randomly to the cylinders until order is restored.
I tried four different Elise variants - base, Sport Pack, Track Pack, and LSD/traction control.
Firing up an Elise requires pressing a button in the key fob to deactivate the anti-theft engine immobilizer, turning the key in the steering column slot, then hitting a separate starter button to the left of the steering wheel. Unnecessarily fussy, and engineer Nick Adams agrees.
"We buy a perfectly good ignition switch from a supplier with the starter function built right in, just like 99 per cent of cars on the road,'' he groaned.
"But the marketing guys decided that if the Bentley Continental and the Honda S2000 have a separate starter button then we must too.''
Win some, lose some…
Adams won 'way more than he lost.
Because the Elise is just about the purest driving experience you can get in a car that can be licensed for the road.
Why? It's that 899 kg thing again.
The 190-horse engine propels the car from rest to 100 km/h in about 5 seconds. That's sensational for any car, but with less than 200 ponies?
The gearbox is as direct as you'll find this side of a racing car, although it is a bit notchy, and I occasionally had trouble locating second gear from third.
No race-car worries about the clutch though; it is quick but light, and easy to manage.
Elise doesn't have power-assisted steering because it doesn't even come close to needing it. Changing direction requires little more than thinking about it.
Astonishing Agility
The car turns on a dime and leaves a nickel change. The differences in the suspension set-ups were a bit hard to detect in reasonably quick road driving - the base car's thinner tires do understeer slightly more; the limited slip differential does exacerbate this feeling - but you need a closed track to safely explore this car's limits.
Lotus laid on a fast slalom course for us, where the traction control car could be heard burp-burp-burping along as the power was intermittently cut. Otherwise, the intervention was so benign as to be nearly undetectable.
The ride quality is even pretty decent, because the springs don't have to be rock-hard to support any excess avoirdupois, especially when cornering hard.
The brakes are about as close to hand-of-God as you're likely to encounter. ABS is standard - while Lotus doesn't go in for technical frippery for its own sake, they aren't Morgan either…
The proximity of trunk and engine didn't seem to affect the temperature of the cargo room; although the bulkhead between the two cavities flexes easily when you wiggle it, the insulation must be pretty good because my briefcase didn't get unduly hot during my test drives.
What about quality? With a Lotus, you have to ask.
Nick Adams noted, "We are a very small company, and we only have so much money to spend on development. You can't of course cut corners on safety, and our car is very strong and performs very well in crash tests.
"But I will place my emphasis on dynamics and reliability. I mean, if a trim panel rattles, the car will still get you home. Not that we ignore trim panel rattles!''
Adams also noted that following a recent track day at Lime Rock Connecticut, there were several broken Japanese, Italian and German sports cars, but all the Elises drove home.
"Again,'' said Adams, "the light weight helps. It just puts less stress on all the components.''
More Models Coming?
Speaking of developments, what about other variants on the Elise platform?
Adams says they're looking at Canadianizing the even more hard-edged, track-friendly Exige coupe, available as of this year in the US, but question whether the small Canadian market could justify the expense.
The Europa coupe, introduced at this year's Geneva Auto Show, is intended to be more of a Grand Touring car. Because of its European Opel engine, Lotus has no plans to bring it to North America - odd, given that we tend to be more candy-butt about our cars than Europeans, and you'd think the more comfortable Europa might find a market. (If Lotus needs a 240-plus turbo horsepower in a North America-emissions-friendly compact four-cylinder engine they should chat up Mazda about their CX-7 motor…).
Lotus has just three dealers in Canada, in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. They know all about the big money in Calgary; their Vancouver dealer is looking at supporting that market, but Lotus might have to make an Elise SUV or pick-up for those cowboys…
(My God - why do I even mention things like that?)
Summing Up
Any car is a compromise, emphasizing certain features over others. How successful a car is can be judged on how well it achieves what it intends.
On that basis, the Elise is a remarkable piece. Lotus has aimed for a car that stresses handling and driving feel, but not at the expense of beating its driver up.
They happily admit it isn't for everyone. But if you share these objectives, all you have to do is study that options list, choose your colour, write the cheque and wait about six weeks to three months, depending on the complexity of your order.
You won't regret it.