Road Test: Lotus Elise 1.8 220 Cup 2dr

The Elise is an immature scamp: an entertaining thing in passing, but over prolonged exposure its noisy and panting nature can get pretty tiresome. Yet in other ways it’s like an old sage, an oracle to be cherished and revered. Approaching the close of its second decade, it has characteristics that are truly benchmarks.

For that reason alone, a new version should be welcome. But there’s more. The Elise S Cup is evidence that Lotus is in recovery from its bruising rollercoaster of misplaced investment, retrenchment and lockdown.

Broadly speaking, it’s a road-going version of the track-only fixed-hardtop S Cup R. The S stands for 217bhp of supercharged Lotus-Toyota four, so performance isn’t any too shabby. But the real headliner is the way it tackles corners quick and slow, thanks to the Cup bit: an aero kit and stiffened chassis tune. Stereo and aircon are available but not standard, and so’s an extra dose of sound deadening that doesn’t do a bad job of making things habitable – well, as far as ear-bleedin’ quasi-racers go, anyway.

Sure enough, on a track it’s all about quick-reacting precision and conversation, the delicious steering letting you know just when it’s nibbling at understeer, the seat communicating the onset of oversteer. The ESP’s Sport setting allows you to play small slide angles with great subtlety. At 120mph, the splitter, barge boards, side duct vanes and a huge rear-wing-and-diffuser combo are shoving you into the tarmac with a force equivalent to 100kg, and it’s already doing good work at road speeds. Result is a real sense of security in fast corners that’d have a normal Elise feeling slightly floaty.

But there are plenty of cars that do this well on track – albeit by dint of more power and money. On-road, the Elise is unique.

It’s small, its ride is relatively supple and its front tyres are a super-slim 175mm in section. So it doesn’t need much road width, and it doesn’t tramline. On a British back road, those are stupendous assets. The minuscule nose weight means the steering rack happily goes without power assistance. The result is an absolute joy, a wheel free of friction and largely without kickback, yet intimate in telling you what grip is left. When you think how often you actually use your car’s steering, that’s a benchmark well worth having