Lotus Elise

The Lotus Elise is a two door two seat mid-engined sports car made by Lotus Cars in England. The platform for the elise was eventually put to use in making the Lotus Exige high performance sports car.

Development
The car was conceived in 1994 in order to revitalize the stagnant Lotus brand after the failure of the new front wheel drive Elan and Lotus' departure from Formula One. The car, in keeping with Lotus tradition, had to have it's name start with an 'E', therefore, the car was named Elise after Elisa, Romano Artioli's granddaughter, Lotus' chairman at the time. The car was developed using an all aluminum monocoque frame and the powerplant was sourced from Toyota to counteract Lotus' old shoddy and unreliable image.

Series One
The first series was launched in 1996 to the world with a 5 speed manual transmission. The car received much well deserved positive press due to the fact that it offered supercar performance from a meaningless toyota 4-cylinder engine by making the car extremely light and giving god-like handling. The success of the car is often cited as the car that saved Lotus from bankruptcy.

Series Two
The second series was launched in 2002 after long negotiations with General Motors of Europe to develop the car with GM money to meet crash sustainability. In return, General Motors would share the platform on Vauxhall VX220 and Opel Speedster. Much like the previous series, the car was generally well received by the press and the buying public. A key point explored by the press was the Elise was remarkably improved over the first series.