The Elise is one of the world’s finest | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

How has the Elise survived so long? ‘Necessity’ is a large part of the answer. Until Lotus was bought by Geely in 2017, there simply wasn’t the money around to replace it and, now that there is, the money is going to be spent on a bigger, more expensive mid-engined sportscar – the Type 131 – because that’s where the profits lie. But there is another reason, which is simply that while we all drool over Chapman’s children, like the original Elite and Elan, the Elise in its own time was just as clever in its engineering and, it has turned out, timeless in its design.

Of course there have been different generations, three in fact, but don’t doubt for a minute that a 2021 Elise is a direct development of that which first took to the road in 1996 and deserves therefore to be considered from absolutely the same family of cars. By contrast and depending on how you measure it, I’d argue there have been in fact at least three and probably four entirely distinct families of Porsche 911.

But of course, just as we dream of the pared back purity of an early short wheelbase 911, so too do we look back at the Elise S1 in its original form because it was the idea from which all subsequent variants sprang. And when you consider that’s over 50 distinct models (if you count special editions), plus the Exige and not to mention the Vauxhall VX220 let alone the Tesla Roadster, that’s a hell of roster of products to spin off one idea.

Then again, it was one hell of an idea in the first place and I like to think it came from the engineering team sitting down and asking ‘what would Chapman do?’ if asked to create a new and affordable Lotus from a clean sheet. And the answer would be the same as it was when he did exactly that with the Elite and Elan: it would be simple, clever, advanced and, above all, light.

Staggeringly light, with the benefit of hindsight. When it came to market in 1996 with a bonded chassis of extruded aluminium with revolutionary metal matrix composite brakes, the Elise weighed just 725kg. Sure a Caterham was even lighter, but the Lotus was a far more usable, and user-friendly proposition. Today the base Elise with a supercharged engine offering almost double the power of the original is over 200kg heftier.

So, to see what we will shortly be missing, I went to Lotus HQ in Hethel, Norfolk for a rendezvous with an early S1 Elise in original specification save a sports exhaust and some Bilstein dampers. It was wet, I only drove it on the famous test track and I had an absolute ball.

I’d not driven an Elise of this vintage for over 20 years but everything about it was instantly and utterly familiar. It really was like hooking up with a friend with whom you’d lost touch and discovering that despite being older, neither of you had changed in the least. Of course I could describe all the things I could see and hear that helped create this impression, but really it’s actually all about how it feels.

Because that’s what lightness is all about. The lighter a car, the more alive it feels, and it really is as simple as that. Very clever modern cars with state of the art electronics and four-wheel steering systems can synthesis some sense of the agility of a smaller, lighter car but none can provide that feel, that sense of connection to the road surface offered a standard in the Elise.

The steering is a living creature, writhing gently in your hands, flooding your fingers with information, never leaving you in any doubt about how much or, indeed, how little grip remains underfoot. Even in this weather it offers huge grip because having so little weight to persuade to change direction means very little work for the tyres too. And while a mid-engined car with no limited-slip differential is not the kind of machine in which drift jockeys would choose to skid about, it still slides beautifully and, with those Bilsteins, reassuringly too: because it’s so light it has very little momentum so while it rotates quite quickly, you don’t need acres of space to round it up, just quite rapid arm movements.

I loved this little car in 1996 and I still do. Properly maintained, they’re pretty reliable too, especially later cars with Toyota engines. But I’d still have an original S1, perhaps a 111S with 143PS rather than 118PS. It’s not just one of the all-time great Lotuses, it’s one of the world’s finest sportscars, period.