Best Lotus ever?

Having made the first of numerous business visits to Hethel in early 1972, being twice a major customer of Lotus Engineering and a contracted project manager to Lotus Cars over the next 20 years, and a close follower of its fortunes since, I consider myself better-qualified than most non-employees to pass opinion on its cars. However, the front cover banner Best Ever Lotus that heralded John Simister’s article about the Elise in Octane 185 left me wondering if I knew its products as well as I thought.

Was the Elise best packaged? Best styled? Best engineered? Best developed? Best tested? Best sourced? Best tooled? Best manufactured? Best exported?

No. Collectively those plaudits all belong to another – the M100 Elan – and for one reason above all, that then-owner General Motors stumped up Hethel’s first-ever realistic new model budget. It also justified engineering director Colin Spooner and test driver John Miles’s strategy of front-wheel drive on the basis that customers would probably have been reared on hot hatches. At the Elan’s 1990 launch, it was described by Autocar as ‘the quickest point-to-point car available’.

Former Lotus designer Julian Thomson is right about one thing, though. It is time for a new Elise. That 23 years have passed since Lotus developed a genuinely new roadster says much about the disappointments of Proton ownership. Maybe new owner Geely’s coffers can match those of GM and resurrect the rich heritage of Hethel’s roadsters.