The Lotus Elise is probably one of the most common images people conjure up when they think ‘light, mid-engined sports car’.
It’s now fairly common around the world, where people drive them on the street, at trackdays and even enter actual racing disciplines with modified examples.
And who’d blame the fans? The Elise was a cutting edge car back in the mid-1990s when it came about, with its super light body and bonded aluminum chassis – it epitomized the Lotus philosophy of ‘adding lightness’, which is why I think it was so much more popular than older models, an actual modern British motoring icon…
If you want to have one as a fairly cheap canyon carver, then you don’t really need to do anything to it. If you mess with the suspension, tires and brakes, you’ll make the car’s excellently balanced chassis shine – apparently, they can understeer if the correct driving technique isn’t applied, and better tires and shocks do help in that respect.
Matt Farah had one on TST, which he drove on the Angeles Crest highway, in California.