Our visit to Lotus would have been incomplete without an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the most successful Lotus road car yet, the Elan. I was offered the wheel of either a standard off the shelf car or of Lotus Sales Director Graham Arnold’s personal and rather special Elan, and l chose the latter.
Graham’s car is a Special Equipment coupe finished in nonstandard black-even the normally yellow and green Lotus bonnet badge has a black background-and with red upholstery. At diferent times various tweaks have been applied to the engine, which is carefully balanced and now has steel rods, special cams and a power output of around 135 bbp. Other creature comforts include stereo tape recorder, expensive radio and Maserati horns.
The Elan layout with its deep backbone forked at each end to carry engine and front and rear suspension, will be familiar to most readers. The rounded body shape of the Elan, with its popup headlights, is neat and pleasing, if not as attractive as either the Elite or the newer Elan Plus 2. From its introduction in December 1962-since when around 5500 have been built-the Elan has grown up considerably, both in detail design and finish, while retaining its basic specification unchanged, Latest cars boast features like airflow ventalation and electric windows, and the finish of the painted fibre glass body is very good. Kit form prices are £1,353 for the standard coupé or drop-head, and £1,486 for the Specul Equipment versions.
The Elan is a small car, but the narrow doors, with their lack of conventional window-winding mechanism, allow the simple but very comfortable seats to be reasonably wide, despite the bulky backbone, " Of course the driving position is first class - one relaxes with the wheel at arm’s length and all the
control within easy reach in their logical positions: the instrumentation is comprehensive and the pleasing 14 ins diameter wheel has a leather rim.
The unfamiliar driver is reminded as soon as he gets under way of the presence of Rotoflex couplings in the driveshafts, which can render low speed progress rather jerky until one is used to them, but a delicate touch on throttle and clutch sorts this out. In fact, all operations required in driving an Elan are delicate ones; the powerful servo-assisted brakes are very light, and a fine touch of the steering wheel is very necessary; and it seems one only has to lean lightly on the wheel - almost subconsciously, like leaning a motorcycle–to sweep throunh a fast curve.
With only 14 very smoothly shaped cwt to move around, the "cooking (105bhp) and normal SE (115 bhp) Elans are very brisk performers and Grahams Amold’s car, which a farther 20 bhp over the SE, was tremendousy quick. There was no opportunity to take any figures, nor to check the accuracy of the speedometer or rev-counter, but there was no doubt that the car certainly had an impressive performance. The engine seemed to want to go on and on revving, and the little car rocketed up to an indicated 70 in second and 100 in third with an almost disdainful effortlessness. The engine felt rather lumpy at low revs thanks to the special cams but was still perfectly tractable, and once the revs began to build up, it felt Silky-smooth up to 7000 rpm.
The roadholding and handling of the Lotus Elan have become a standard by which others are judged, and the car is certainly very controllable and mighty forgiving. Even rushing into a sharp corner fast, piling on lock and brakes, fails to upset it; once the brakes are off and the foot is on the throttle, round it goes, understeering slightly but still completely controllable. Tweaking it into
a tight hairpin, deliberately trying to provoke oversteer, still fails to produce fireworks; the tail will hang out a little, but the driver remains in complete command. The Chapman formula of very stiff chassis and fairly soft suspension works as well in the control department as it does in the road holding, and for a sports car with a 7 ft wheelbase, the Elan is amazingly free from pitching and bouncing.
More and more Elans are apparently being sold to professional people in their thirties and forties, showing that the car appeals not only because it is a fast sports car which is exhilarating and satisfying to drive fast, but also because as a dispassionate mode of transport, it is conveniently fast and safe. Its unruffleable roadholding, controllability, and feeling of undramatic safety make it a very good bet for long, hurried journeys on crowded roads of varying quality.