The Perfect Sports Car Drive.

The Lotus elan – Hailed by many as The perfect Sports Car.

Released in 1962 – Production ceased in 1975 – Colin Chapman’s Gift To The Sports Car Driver.

The unique torsionally stiff lightweight sheet metal constructed chassis, the amazing performance from the twin cam engine, along with advanced suspension design and dynamics, at the time, made the elan one of the most agile and best handling sports cars.

With the addition of sensible modern upgrades and technology, it is possible to elevate the elan to a much higher level of driver enjoyment altogether.

The fixes and mods are well known amongst the lotus fraternity, so we wont be discussing them here.

Below is our latest video footage – Shot just a few days before another lock-down was imposed in the writers region.

There are also owners who lust after a five speed gearbox in place of the snickity-snick ford four cog box, but as every enthusiastic elan driver will tell you, why would you NOT want to drive with the absolutely delicious rifle bolt precision four speeder in your elan? It doesn’t make any sense.

The delightful close ratio gear box is a large part of what makes the elan drive so damn sweet, so the five speed, while a great thing on the free-way… if that is your main aim, to mostly drive the elan on the free-way, you could be missing out on the best driving rewards provided by the elan.

To counteract the lack of a five speed box, the writer runs a 3.55 Diff ratio, the gear box is close ratio, its a magic combination.

There are few cars which are as quick as the elan on a point to point basis, and instead of the free-way, why not take the minor B roads to miss the traffic, and enjoy the driving challenge on offer, I would say that you will find your self sporting the largest grin ever when you arrive at point B.

The standard 105BHP Lotus twin cam engine provided an eager and brisk performance, the big valve at 125BHP even more so, but imagine the shove available with a high performance 1700cc twin cam with 150-160BHP on tap…. Now you have one very exciting lotus elan sports car… which many modern day so called hot hatches will have trouble staying with along the challenging bits.

A well documented tongue in cheek quote from Graham Arnold, the ex Lotus marketing guru; “The elan can average 69MPH without exceeding 70MPH” is not far from the truth, you don’t have to (Often) break the speed limit, much to the frustration of drivers with more powerful cars.

The writer has owned (MGA MK11) as well as having had the opportunity to drive other 60s era sports cars, such as MGB, Healey’s, TR’s, etc, they are nice old sports cars, but they are all built on inadequate chassis and suspension systems, and rate poorly on many fronts as far as automotive engineering significance goes, when compared to the lotus elan.

The elan simply does everything a great sports drivers car should be expected to do, they go, stop, and corner like on rails, and the bonus is the huge grin on the drivers face with every visceral drive…. show me a car (Not counting super cars) that can still do that today, and here’s the rub, many people forget that the S2 Lotus elan is now fifty five years old…

So, they shouldn’t be so indecently quick should they? But they are, and it defies logic, so there you are.

OK, now go out and have some driving fun in your elan if you can.