This is a very rare low mileage Lotus Elise Sport 160 that came from the Lotus factory with substantial upgrades. It has had fitted the S1 Exige Race (aka Elise Motorsport) clams and an Audi 1.8T engine. Even with the fully programmable engine management it is still one of the most analogue driving experiences available. In layman’s terms this means taking the baby “Elise” and adding it’s big brother’s “exige” body onto the Elise chassis and adding a Volkswagen turbo engine.
All work is carried out to exceptional standards, verging just beyond clinical in my eyes which is unreal and it’s full of innovations to make working on every component easier. With a mild road tune of 250bhp, components in place to greatly increase the bhp and quickly removable body clams and under trays it is built for the track but fully road legal.
What’s more impressive is that Nelson Stewart from Bangor who has been building impeccable fast road / track cars for year built pretty much this full car himself in his own garage and clearly has an extremely understanding wife as this build most certainly wasn’t done in a day, or in a year for that matter.
As you can imagine it is quite extreme and absolutely everything is uprated, carbon fibre, quick release or race spec. It has no excess weight with little soundproofing, the little Lotus weighs well under 800kg so is stupidly fast (as I can testify personally after getting a run in it after the photos were done), looks stunning and if it matters, quite economical if you keep off the boost.
Using the abundant and reliable Audi 1.8 TT turbo engine with simple, easy to access components means this car is very inexpensive to maintain. The alloy and composite construction means there will never be a worry about rust and the light weight allows maximum use with minimal wear on tyres, brakes and clutch.
You will notice the rear clam cover swings back, that is because this is the only S1 Exige I know of with a quickly removable roof section with an infill panel that allows it to be driven without the roof section in place as a targa.