The new 2015 Lotus Elise

Lotus, the British sports car manufacturer has been producing the Elise since 1996. It was named Elise after Elisa who is the granddaughter of Romano Artioli who was the chairman of Lotus at the time. The Elise is only a handful of cars that are still hand built in fibreglass, the body is bonded to the all aluminium chassis, and this keeps the car light and reduces production cost.

The 2002 Lotus Elise which is the current model was developed in collaboration with Vauxhall/Opel. Lotus needed the funding for the development and research hence collaborated and produced the Vauxhall VX220, which was basically a –rebadged Lotus Elise.

In 2008, the Elise was given a slight refresh and new models were added to the line up. As well as the naturally aspirated Elise producing 189 bhp, Lotus introduced a second version, the Elise SC sporting a non-intercooled supercharger producing 218 bhp.

For 2015 Lotus has unveiled an all new Elise, it looks very much like a high performance sports car. The new Elise’s bold directional body gives you subtle hints of the traditional Elise’s lines but looks completely different at the same time.

Dany Bahar, Chief Executive Officer of Group Lotus was very proud of the 2015 Elise at the unveiling and commented, “We worked very hard on getting the Elise 2015 exactly right, it’s our entry level car so it needs to give a proper introduction to the Lotus driving experience. The Elise you can buy now is still a fantastic car, make no mistake, Lotus remain very proud of it, but this is a natural progression for us moving forward. The Elise 2015 will also be class-leading in terms of performance and efficiency but it will do more than that it will take the Elise model to the forefront of its class across the board.”

The current model Elise still has plenty of life left in it and will be on sale right up until the 2015 model hits the dealerships. The new Lotus Elise R in Poole is very popular, it has a 0-60mph time of just 5.1 seconds, top speed of 138mph and a power output of 189bhp.