Lotus Elise

The Lotus Elise is a roadster conceived in early 1994 and released in September 1996 by the English manufacturer Lotus Cars. The car has a hand-finished fiberglass body shell atop its aluminium extrusion and bonded frame that provides a rigid platform for the suspension, while keeping weight and production costs to a minimum. The design philosophy of Lotus is \”Performance through light weight\”, a philosophy first adopted by the founder of Lotus, Colin Chapman. The motto drives Lotus to obtain very high performance with lightweight cars in spite of their relatively modest power outputs, with a strong emphasis on driving purity and dynamics. Photography by Tim Wallace.