The Lotus Elise is a two seat, rear-wheel drive, mid-engined roadster conceived in early 1994 and released in September 1996 by the English manufacturer Lotus Cars. The car has a hand-finished fibreglass body shell atop its bonded extruded aluminium chassis that provides a rigid platform for the suspension, while keeping weight and production costs to a minimum. The roadster is capable of speeds up to 240 km/h (150 mph). The Elise was named after Elisa, the granddaughter of Romano Artioli who was chairman of Lotus at the time of the car's launch.

In recent years a war of escalation has seen horsepower figures in performance cars climb to stratospheric levels. But like most things in life theres more than one way to solve a problem. From its earliest days the Lotus brand has argued that fast cars should be small and light, not heavy and overpowered. A perfect embodiment of that concept is the Lotus Elise. 

A cramped, sparsely equipped sports car made of aluminum and fiberglass may not be everybodys idea of perfection but theres no denying those attributes pay huge dividends in terms of performance.