Lotus Elise S Cup: From The Track To The Road
If you have ever driven a Lotus Elise, you know that the car has more in common with a racecar than a regular vehicle: it has rock-hard suspension, almost no sound deadening, the engine roars right behind your ears and you sit pretty much on the ground. The S is even worse (or better, depending on your preferences).
But just in case you thought the standard Elise didn't perform well enough on a track, the manufacturer just unveiled the Elise S Cup, a lower, more aggressive track-day toy. However, unlike the Elise S Cup R, this one is actually road-legal.
With the addition of a few aerodynamic tweaks (like a front lip, dive planes and a gigantic rear wing made of carbon fibre), the Elise Cup S has 66 kilos of added downforce at 160 km/h. Around the Ethel circuit, where Lotus fine-tunes most of their vehicles, the new car was up to 3 seconds faster than the Elise S.
The engine used is the tried-and-true four-cylinder mill developed by Toyota and fed by a supercharger, which helps it generate up to 217 horsepower. The transmission is a manual six-speed unit.
The Lotus Elise S Cup is available in Europe from $78,400.