EliseInfo.com

Pistonheads poses the odd question of which to choose, a standard Exige or the supercharged, highly track-modified Cup 240R? I say it’s an obvious choice! You can read the whole article at Pistonheads. I think this whole article was just used as an excuse to go drive these two cars (yeah, I’m jealous).

Lotus has taken a car that was already marketed as being track ready, the Exige, and made it, well, MORE track ready and are calling it the Exige Cup. Upgrades include a better clutch, Ohlins shocks, uprated brakes, LSD, traction control, mounts for restraint harnesses, fuel and ignition kill switches, a built in fire extinguisher system, and an optional six point roll cage. A supercharged version will be available as well (to be called the Exige Cup 240). There’s no word on whether this will be available in the US. That option list is great, with one odd exception, the LSD. The word from factory insiders and racers is that the LSD really only helps on low speed courses, it can actually hurt performance on higher speed corners and is the principle reason that traction control is included with every LSD-equipped car. (source)

I’ve added some pictures of a laser blue Exige that I found on EliseTalk. Pretty sweet color, really great on the Exige. Check it out in the gallery.

I saw an interesting product over at Sector111 today. It’s a kit to convert the normal ‘H’ shift patterned Elise transmission to a sequential shifting one. It does this purely by means of a mechanism that attaches to the two shift cables. Quite clever really, as you can get all the benefits of a sequential transmission without very much cost (only $3000 for this kit) or complications that come with adapting a different transmission to an engine. Check it out at Sector111.

I’ve uploaded pictures from the 11/12 Club111 drive to Half Moon Bay to the gallery. The main goal of this drive was to get some good group pictures for inclusion in the upcoming 2006 Club111 calendar, but our group of cars got split up early in the drive so the desired group shot by the ocean never materialized. Fortunately though, the groups all caught up at the lunch stop, and we had a great day of driving through the hills with no speeding tickets and no cars damaged.

While much of their article seems to be about the UK Elise, a lot of it is still relevant to the US market. The details are nothing new if you read this site or EliseTalk regularly, though the comment about AD07 tires coming with the (optional) sport suspension is a bit confusing…currently, Elises in the US receive the stickier Yokohama A048 while the AD07 comes standard on the base model Elises. I expect that to remain unchanged, and think this is just a change to the specification in the UK. You can read the Pistonhead’s review here.

The Advanced Vehicle Research of North Carolina (a venture of the North Carolina state government) has teamed up with Lotus Engineering to build a state of the art vehicle testing and development center. The facility will feature a high speed track, ride and handling track, vehicle dynamics areas, advanced emissions laboratory, hydrogen and alternative fuel refilling stations, client offices, and workshop areas. Maybe this will help American automakers make cars that can better compete with European ones? Read on for the entire press release…
Read the rest of this entry »