Lotus Elise 20th Anniversary Edition.
Twenty years ago, in September 1995, the Lotus Elise was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show. At the time, it revolutionized the sports car world, setting a benchmark for handling, purity of the driving experience and its lightweight and efficiency. The Elise’s pioneering and advanced bonded aluminium chassis was also a market-leading technological innovation.
Since then, the driving performance of the Elise has been improved and evolved, with its aluminum chassis remaining the core to the Elise’s exceptional performance.
“It is sometimes hard to believe that the Elise has been around for 20 years,” said Jean-Marc Gales, CEO of Lotus Group. “It was ground-breaking when it was launched and continues to be the benchmark for handling and performance in its class. Over the years we have improved and refined the Elise but we have also ensured that we have retained the purity of the driving experience and for the Elise to remain as the sports car to which other marques aspire.”
The Elise 20th Anniversary, with its lightweight aero-optimized, composite body, is powered by a 1.8-litre supercharged engine. It reaches 0-100 km/h in 4.6 seconds and has a top speed of 237 km/h.
The benefit of this light weight is that the Elise 20th Anniversary consumes just 5.9-litres / 100 km extra urban and emits just 173 g of CO2 per kilometre.
The Elise 20th Anniversary weighs in at just 914 kilograms, 10 kilograms less than the Elise S.
Additional equipment compared to the Elise S comes as standard and is designed to reduce weight, including lightweight matte black forged wheels, lightweight centre console in body colour and lightweight sports seats in leather or Alcantara with colour-coded stitching.
A sport mode is also included, which increases throttle response and alters the traction slip thresholds, allowing the driver enhanced control before intervention.
Four classic Elise colours are available in blue, green, yellow, and silver and the rear diffuser, wing mirrors, roll hoop cover and rear transom are in matte black.
Elise 20th Anniversary decals inside on the dashboard and seats and outside above the side indicator identify the anniversary special edition.
The Elise is the most successful Lotus model in terms of numbers built, with a total of almost 32,000 built and sold globally.
In addition to the Elise, the Lotus small platform technology has been used in the Lotus Exige, Lotus Europa and Lotus 2-Eleven models, all of which are, or have been manufactured by Lotus at its headquarters in Hethel, Norfolk.