Scottish Elises

Been reading some old Evo mags which mentioned this concept car.


http://www.pistonheads.com/lotus/m250/m250-launch.htm

seen some photos of it from the recent open day at hethel.

It gorgeous - thats what the S2 should have looked like

You can see hints of the s2 but its very cool

r055 wrote:seen some photos of it from the recent open day at hethel.

It gorgeous - thats what the S2 should have looked like

Why not what the S3 does look like.

Probably not with the V6 but with the Yota in its various forms.

I recon that Lotus should stop messing about with high end cars which it does not have the cash to develop or the skills to manufacture.

A range of relatively cheep lightweight sports cars, little bit of range of size power and price but I think they are daft to try to compete with Porsche etc who have fortunes to spend on R&D and much more advanced production facilities.

Do what you do best boys (sports cars) and leave the super cars to those who do them best.

Controversial maybe, just my view.

Harsh but fair.

They do not need a white elephant project, they cannot compete with the build quality, reliability or standards of the big players it will just become a millstone around their necks (Again) when it goes belly up and doesn't sell.

The beauty of the Lotus designs is the simple (But technically brilliant) chassis design combined with easily sculptable lightweight composites (When compared to steel!) GRP has come on enormously and materials such as carbon fiber offer huge possibilities. The Ali tub/GRP lid is still world beating.

Back to the original Chapman ethic: simply add lightness!
:

Why not what the S3 does look like

Sat in the 250 when it was at MMC years ago and it is STUNNING but was dropped as it did not meet legislation for all markets ( read USA) so probably not suitable for S3 as they need a world car, but yes please to the look and some of the detailing !! Keith

Looks stunning

Remembered doing a feature on the car for the paper back in 2000 when it was at MMC. Dug out the pix and posted below.

Why, oh why, did they not put that into production!!!!


















Look closely and you'll spot MMC's Graeme in one of the pix!!

Have you noticed how Proton have been nicking bits of Lotus concepts for their cars... Just look at the centre console of the M250 then check out a Proton gen 2 centre console

A mate of mine had one of these on order for aaaaages, was really frothed up about it, used to schmooze Graeme/any other poor Lotus employee at motorshows, was totally peed off when they canned it....

...he used his deposit to buy a then new S2 (dark blue with JOHNNY plate)which I believe he eventually sold to Ian Boag

Had a good look round the M250 at Murray ourselves, too. Lovely stuff. Hadn't long bought my brand new S1 so the eye watering price for a new Lotus model wasn't even on my radar. Agree it looked the dogs. I know at least one founding SE member who had a deposit down! After it all got canned, I'm sure he just spent it on a few trips to the Ring instead