The Lotus 3-Eleven is the first of the company’s promised new generation of sports cars and the 450bhp, sub-900kg car is the fastest and most expensive model it has built.
The car, revealed at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, is the brainchild of its new CEO, Jean-Marc Gales. The car will come in two versions — Road and Race — costing between £82,000 and £115,200, depending on specification.
Gales called the 3-Eleven “an uncompromised manifestation of the Lotus idiom” that delivers “legendary handling and blistering speed”. In Race form, it recently lapped Lotus’s Hethel circuit in just 1min 22sec, fully 10sec faster than the next-quickest Lotus.
Straight-line performance is just as electrifying. The Race version can cover 0-60mph in less than 3.0sec, which pitches it straight into McLaren P1 and LaFerrari territory. Flat out, the 3-Eleven can top 174mph in Race trim, and the Road model, on a slightly taller gearing, can do 180mph.
Gales intends recording an early Nürburgring lap time, confident that his car will be “not far away” from the sub-7min time posted by Porsche’s £1 million 918 Spyder. Gales said: “The 3-Eleven condenses our engineering know-how into a hardcore package that won’t suit everyone. But it is a perfect demonstration of the concept crucial to all future Lotus cars.”
The engine is a transverse, midmounted version of Lotus’s 3.5-litre Toyota-sourced V6, with the supercharger, integrated charge cooler and engine management electronics designed at Hethel. Power is 450bhp at 7000rpm, and maximum torque is 332lb ft at 3500rpm.
The road-going 3-Eleven gets a conventional six-speed H-pattern gearbox (with racing clutch) and the Race version has an Xtrac sequential six-speed paddleshift ’box. Both have Torsentype limited-slip differentials.
The car has a bonded and riveted aluminium monocoque tub chassis reminiscent of other Lotus models’ but “massively strengthened” for this new application. The Road model’s rollcage incorporates extra side impact bars, and the Race cage has additional bars to meet FIA international race regulations.
The 3-Eleven’s dramatic silhouette is formed in a new composite material 40% lighter than standard glassfibre, its first application in a production car. Designed in-house at Lotus, the car has all the cooling scoops and exit vents a powerful car needs while keeping aerodynamic drag and frontal area low.
The car’s profile is dominated by an “aerodynamically significant” roll-over bar cover and there are different front splitter and rear spoiler designs for Road and Race models. In Race trim, the aero package delivers about 215kg of downforce at 150mph.
The cockpit treatment is minimalistic. There’s an aero screen, the instrument pack is designed around a single TFT screen, and the driver’s seat is a lightweight Lotus-designed bucket. A quick-release steering wheel and four-point harness are both standard.
Road car owners have the option of a tonneau panel covering the passenger’s side, or can remove it and fit an optional passenger’s seat.
Both the Race and Road models get an all-independent suspension with lightweight coil-sprung double wishbones, special Ohlins dampers and adjustable front anti-roll bars. Both models ride on lightweight forged alloy wheels (18in front, 19in rear) and wear either Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres (Road) or Michelin Cup 2s (Race). Both also get two-piece cross-drilled and vented disc brakes with AP Racing four-piston callipers.
Anticipating strong worldwide demand for the 3-Eleven and the recently announced Evora 400, Lotus is splitting its Hethel production onto two lines, Evora and The Rest, and ramping up production to 70 cars a week by this September from the current 45.
The company expects to take about two years to build the planned batch of 311 cars, selling them both through dealers and from its Racing department. Deliveries will begin next April.
Meet the ancestorsLotus’s new 3-Eleven picks up a race-car-for-the-road tradition established by founder Colin Chapman as long ago as 1956 with the original, ultra-lightweight Lotus Eleven, which had a super-aerodynamic aluminium body over a steel spaceframe chassis.
It was sold as a road car, but on the track it perfectly embodied Colin Chapman’s “just add lightness” philosophy with a kerb weight of just over 400kg when powered by an 1100cc Climax engine, and it scored impressive class wins at places like Le Mans and Sebring.
Half a century later, in 2007, Lotus launched the doorless, open cockpit 2-Eleven, employing much the same philosophy, with Elise running gear as its basis. The car was nominally available with a tuned version of the Elise’s 1.8-litre Toyota-derived four-cylinder engine, but most buyers opted for the 252bhp version, with supercharging engineered at Hethel, which delivered a 0-60mph time well under 4.0sec plus a 150mph top speed.
However, today’s 3-Eleven, with 20% more weight but 80% more power, promotes the car to a new class.
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