This artist's impression shows how the Lotus 3-Eleven could lookNew 3-Eleven will have more than 500bhp per tonne and cost about £70k when it arrives next year after a Goodwood Festival of Speed debut
Lotus is well advanced with plans to launch a new, super-fast track-day sports car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
It’s understood to be capable of lapping the Nürburgring in just over seven minutes, just a few seconds slower than the latest mega-cars: the Porsche 918 Spyder, LaFerrari and McLaren P1.
The new Lotus is built in the mould of Lotus’s revered 2-Eleven of 2007 - except that its engine is twice as large and produces nearly 70% more power. Called 3-Eleven, it seems certain to be the fastest sub-£100,000 two-seater to set an official lap time on the famous German circuit.
Under development at Hethel now, the 3-Eleven is tipped to cost about £70,000 and should hit the market this time next year after its Goodwood debut. Lotus has begun a teaser campaign on Twitter in the build up to the new car's launch.
It will be an ultra-light, competition-oriented design with simple controls, composite seats, race-style downforce from a specially developed aerodynamic pack, an abbreviated windscreen to cut the frontal area and a built-in roll cage.
The car uses the basic suspension and extruded aluminium monocoque chassis of the Exige S, Lotus’s fastest road car, but incorporates racing know-how from Hethel’s separate competitions department to generate extra speed.
The basic 3-Eleven is likely to appear first as a super-lightweight track-only model, with buyers asked to pay extra for niceties such as lights and wiring to make it roadworthy.
The engine is the same Toyota-derived 3.5-litre V6 used in the Evora and Exige S, with supercharging and electronic engine management developed at Lotus. The Evora and Exige S have recently had power hikes, from 350bhp to 400bhp, but the engine has been boosted further to 420bhp for the 3-Eleven.
That will give the 3-Eleven a power-to-weight ratio of more than 500bhp per tonne. With its bigger engine, the car’s weight is bound to exceed its predecessor’s featherweight 670kg, but it is unlikely to exceed 800kg, still an impressively low figure.
Testing to establish its outright performance is still under way, but the 3-Eleven is certain easily to beat the 1.8-litre 2-Eleven’s 0-60mph time of 3.8sec and its official top speed of 150mph.
Lotus’s performance-driven CEO, Jean-Marc Gales, is understood to want to push into the heart of supercar territory, shattering the 3.0sec 0-60mph barrier and pushing top speed beyond 180mph.
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