LOTUS ELISE S1

Colin Chapman would surely have approved. The Lotus founder was lauded for his company’s engineering ingenuity; the model range has often been full of clever but remarkably simple designs, where a vehicle’s lack of heft allows for smaller power units to be used. Couple the inevitably eager performance with market-leading dynamic handling and you have some of the world’s most widely-acclaimed drivers’ cars.

Okay, so those characteristics were not always backed up with the necessary production quality control, and so the numbers produced were often less than could have been expected. But the Elise was different, with the 25,000th example rolling off the line at Hethel only a decade after its launch. And with the Elise lasting right through to 2021, it ranks as one of the longest-lived Lotus models of all time.

Often cited as the car that saved Lotus, the Elise’s overall look was neat and