The Lotus Elise, McLaren F1 Gold Foil, and... Toothpaste? | Henry Catchpole - The Driver's Seat

[Music] when I was in my early formative teenage years there were probably two cars more than any other that distracted me and interested me most one was the McLaren F1 the other was the Lotus Elise and this is a Lotus with a little bit of McLaren F1 in its engine bay this is the Super Sport from analog Automotive through some painstaking restoration and modernization it aims to take the fabulous series 1 Elise that Lotus developed 30 years ago and elevated it to the next level but to paraphrase Shakespeare is this a case of gilding the Lily if you enjoy this film then please think about joining the haggy drivers Club you get a magazine that's definitely not lightweight and there's 24/7 roadside assistance in case you have a Troublesome head gasket to discover all the benefits just click on the link in the description down below the engine in the first Elise produced just 118 horsepower but thanks to a redesigned block for better heat management revised cams and larger valves in the head plus individual throttle bodies with carbon trumpets and a new ECU this has rather more this Elise now has 2 10 brake horsepower but the thing I love is that they haven't gone down some sort of turbocharging forced induction route this is still a naturally aspirated K series engine it sounds fabulous but it's individual throttle bodies matched to a qu quick shift kit and close ratios so second third and fourth have been changed there's also a lightweight flywheel a qua ATB limited slip diff and Motorsport drive shafts but as you've probably noticed it's not just the drivetrain that's been altered on this car when I first saw the Super Sport I could have sworn that it had wider Bodywork but as you can see it doesn't it's just a sort of trick of the eye so this does have wider tracks they fill the Arches that much better 30 mm wider at the front also you can see quite significantly lower ride height 25 mm lower compared to an original S1 there are a couple of other little things as well the removal of the fog lights which in fact this one has had already and I think these smoked inner lenses here all just help to widen it visually even if physically it's exactly the same width at the back the track has been increased by 20 mm so not quite as much as at the front but it does remain wider overall at the rear visually the trick they've used is switching these two lights around just having the brake lights on the outside makes it look that a little bit wider otherwise the body workor remains exactly the same apart from this rear wing which is actually from the sport 160 the sport 160 followed on from the sport 135 but there were some really extreme series 1 eles the first one that I remember because weirdly my dentist had one was the sport 190 vhpd which stands for very high performance derivative and puts out yes 190 s from its K series engine it had other cool things like mismatch seats with a big corbo bucket for the driver and then the standard one for the passenger there also cross brace in the cabin that had the yellow Coney dampers signifying Lotus sports suspension then there was the 340r with this amazing single piece of Bodywork over the top no roof no side windows but the same vhpd engine as that sport 190 finally andh perhaps most intriguingly of all was the Motorsport elas which came just before the series 1 Exige and that was interesting because it shared something in common with the McLaren F1 as well a single Central driver's seat on paper this super sport is even more extreme weighing even less than a 340r at under 680 kilos or500 lb while putting out 210 brake horsepower at the wheels and 160 lb ft of talk but the super impressive thing about this it's just how tractable it is how linear it is this is not an engine that's really peaky you might think it would be all up the top end of the Rev range and quite hard to access but you can cruise around in the mid-range relying on that tourque which makes it feel like a really usable enjoyable car on the road the standard gear shifted and leaves was never one of its strong points and in this as well it just takes a little bit of care it's not the slickest or most precise gear shift you'll ever encounter by any stretch of the imagination the fettled pg1 box is definitely better in the Super Sport but can still feel a little reluctant in its engagement compared to the best snicky manuals nothing wrong with the pedals though which remain as beautiful as ever in terms of the chassis well this has got the wider tracks nitron Club sport dampers on it and obviously it's been lowered quite a bit and you look at it from the outside and you think I'm not sure that's going to work on the road and will it have destroyed the famed Lotus ride quality and well yes this is obviously firmer it still rides and copes with a bumpy road like this really well this steering is weight tier but you still get that lovely sense of the car are moving with cers that little bit of sort of almost sort of float over the road surface so although it feels like a much sort of tougher more connected car a more positive car it still feels like an Elise the Super Sport actually has a quicker rack and lightweight steering arms as well and after a while it struck me that the weighting of the wheel was very reminisent of a distant relation a catron 7 perhaps it's something in the water because like at Analog Automotive is based in the south of England it was founded by Stephan do who after we talked about mountain bikes showed me around his new premises with the full build like we SP over here where do you start typically it starts we we'll source and Supply a donor car I mean we could also use a car that someone has it doesn't have to be an Immaculate low mileage you know showroom car we we can have anything up to 100,000 miles whatever it just means the chassis needs we need to suspect it and make sure the chassis is nice and clean um and then from then we do a full strip down almost to well to this standard mhm so we'll strip it down to uh what we call a bear tub obviously the side seals and screens around are bonded on from Factory uh and when you bought a repaired chassis you needed to back in the day they don't do them anymore it would come in pretty much this state so we get it down uh attend to any dissimilar metal issues uh there are a few sort of key uh corrosion spots so we sort those out anything that's Steel subframe uh gets sent off we modify the subframe so this is slightly stiffer slightly stiffer nothing major just a few extra bits of welding some seam welding um a small stiffening bar that just stiffens it up a fraction without adding too much weight and then we have our own unique wishbones either the standard or wide track depending on what spec you go for um and then we will clean it up with a special process we've got to get the chassis as good as new then it's paint on the panels new wishbones fitted long all standard and of course that gold in the engine bay and what sits here is obviously the K series engine and do I dare mention head gaskets head gaskets I thinking I have a t-shirt made up with just hdf on the back but it's not a thing anymore is it it's not we've when we first started I first started this we doing head gaskets on a I wouldn't say daily but a weekly basis you know it was a common occurrence things have changed head gaskets have changed the way engines are built a better stand so now we can reliably get sort of 200 210 horsepower out of it and it's fundamentally such a good I mean sound is great but it's also it's small it's light it's a great little design so yeah we have I've looked at other engines I've had other engine delees in the past but you know we're trying to particularly with some of these being exported to places that didn't have the S1 keeping the original chassis and engines quite important um for those legal reasons to get it into other countries the US got the 25 year rule so yeah so we're just trying to refine what is there and make it as strong and as reliable and then you get all the benefits of it really was quite a good design in the first place after you've seen the months and months of work that go into a full build it's easy to see why a super sport will cost over £100,000 a point that we'll come back to in a moment but while we're talking about the K series I thought I should mention that to finish off the engine stepan specs a full large ball stainless steel exhaust this one finished in sakote what a t just occasionally you'll get what they dub the sonic boom of this car mini explosion the other acoustic novelty to this is actually well aside absence of noise because normally you get an El and there all sorts of sort of rattles really from the under tray but this none of it it feels so tight together I really like the fact that although it's been fastidious iously lightened it has also had little bits of weight added back in where absolutely necessary like some strategically placed sound deadening or that stiffening in the rear subframe elsewhere inside the cabin of this development demonstrator there is a smattering of carbon and new handbrake a better lighter heater system and of course the new tillet carbon bucket seats a definite Improvement on the originals in terms of lateral support the bottoms which were originally from AIO 205 have been swapped out as well I'm actually glad they've left the original stack instruments in here cuz I was always a fan of those with their orange hands very ultramat there is apparently a dash in development but this analog one well seem somehow appropriate other than that there's not much to mention inside no radio no cup holders no distractions I adore the Simplicity of this car with modern cars there's so often something to fiddle with to adjust with this you just get on with it and there's something real really liberating about that the Simplicity of this interior is matched by the Simplicity of the driving experience and I mean that in a very good way naturally that Spartan philosophy applies to all series one eles not just this one and while this super sport is a halo car for analog Automotive there will be less pricey options and the company also does restoration servicing and upgrading it's really not all about the big bucks builds obviously the full build is it's a lot of money there's no two ways about it um and it's one of the things people always say oh it's an awful lot for an Al and I remember one of the things that appealed to me was the original S1 was one or three or four it was about £ 18,000 ago when it was launched which is amazing and there're still a relatively affordable sports car now on the secondhand market so if somebody's looking it's like I can't can't I'd love it but I can't afford that but I can afford Le but I'd like a bit of this in it if they came to you like I want to make an upgrade I want to I want to get a bit of this in my car what would be the first thing you would say they should do uh the Cornerstone of that car was the suspension and everything we've learned over the years there are some adaptations with the the wide track but suspension has got to be the that's what an Elise has always been known for it's what it's been used as a reference to in in when car tests you know drives like an Elise handles like an Elise um so suspension and from twofold really one they're 25 years old a lot of them are running around with the original bushes on there uh the steel wishbones tend to corrode that can then start eating in if left long enough into the chassis so it can be a sort of a a big issue so suspension work make sure that's all upen together get your car handling like an Le should do that's that's the main thing don't worry about people worry about the fiberglass body work um that can be fixed if the suspension goes too far or it's been damaged or it's been crashed so an inspection and suspension restoration or rebuild is definitely number one and what about the handling of this car with its wider tracks larger adjustable front anry rollar and nitron Club sport dampers the driving sensation in this is one that well it gives you more confidence to really push it you can drive it on the power much more we've got an ATV qu liit slip D in the back of this and you can really get stuck in on the throttle where standard of Le wants you to be precise and it can be a little bit prescriptive in how it wants to be driven this lets you roll your sleeves up and get stuck in it will move around a little bit more it's actually a little bit more forgiving you can really use the extra power in this balance it on the throttle and there's a surprising amount of grip these Yokohama noova tires are really good it's obviously pretty damp today we still got a lot of traction and although this daring in this is definitely waiting it absolutely hasn't robbed it of any feel and I love the fact that it's still just little inputs that you need because this sits lower and it has the wider tracks it just has better control of its weight transfers which gives you more confidence you can lean into the grip more quickly more easily in Corners you can have faith in loading that front end and you know that the rear isn't going to get horribly unruly on you so more control particularly at the rear but still with a ride that won't rattle your teeth and talking of Dentistry now I do actually have a tube of toothpaste here because there's a famous post it kind of it crops up on all the forums isn't it of um and it's beautifully done I should it's beautifully written about if somebody asks are the chassis going to come unstuck is the glue not going to last and some somebody wrote a beautiful thing about it's fine as long as during winter you cover it up with toothpaste not the high fluoride ones obviously because that would be terrible but um it is a hoax isn't it yes good good just it's off it's off the back of the different glues um and the bonding on the on the chassis which funny enough I noticed I don't think they gave it very many years maybe 10 years from memory something like that but that's how long they' sort guarantee the chassis and here we are 25 almost knocking on 30 and the chassis once they're cleaned up there isn't any damage to them are probably the strongest part of the car it's the it's the the rusty wishbones and all the steel parts that weren't finished very well that we have to sort of replace but there is also a difference between the yeah two different color glues aren't that's obv orangee glue and then the sort of the bluey green yes one here yeah so that donates the very first eles were green glued card or the chassis were um and that was because they were made in Denmark uh and then the later cars once the he took over production of the chassis they went to the the orange so was Hydro was the company and one of the things because it's hard to work out what's what's what's true what isn't in this sort of world but are the green ones actually lighter yes so the the launch cars which were early green glue cars were the sort of 699 sub 700 kilo cars but even there's tiny little differentiations between a sort of 96 and that blw one there really early I think it's about the 40th car of the production line um between an early 96 to a 97 car there's even tiny little min details in the chassis and the way the the bulkheads ever are slightly different and then the clams change the boot changes so even within you know an S1 from 96 to 99 does have minute changes between them so with our super light which is going to be the lightest version we can probably make we'll start with a green glued car um yeah and build it from that because there are a number of reasons to do that because it is the lightest one to start with but none of them come in spelling of none of the toothpaste needed y you can keep that good to have that all cleared up I think and what about the Super Sport are the changes a case of gilding refined gold of painting The Lily well no for a start so much of this build is simply about preserving and prolonging the life of the wonderful original car things that any series one Elise owner would love to do and then there's the fact that it is brilliant to drive it trades a bit of The Originals delicacy but none of the feel the payoff is a car that you can Chuck around more confidently handling Wise It's a bit like the Alpine a10r is to the standard A110 both have their own character and place in fact given its similar price you might conceivably pitch the Super Sport against an 1100 kilo a10r but this is an awful lot lighter than that that is a lightweight car by modern standards but this is so much lighter and then you think well perhaps you should compare it to things like katrum and aerial atam because they're in the same sort of ballpark in terms of curve we but the Brilliance of the Elise has always been that it's felt that much more approachable than those cars more usable it remains an incredible blend of the purists and just a little bit practical all these years on the magic conjured up by rackam Thompson Shoal at Lotus remains there is nothing quite liking the Le sitting low in this aluminium tub that sort of Group C racer vibe to the view out I love the Elise 30 years old since I started developing this it still feels just so special this is a McLaren F1 yeah I think I had it right as a teenager [Music] oh

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 169,187

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, Henry Catchpole, Lotus Elise, Lotus Elise S1, toothpaste, glue, sports car, simplify and add lightness, McLaren F1, suspension, engineering, restored, Analogue Automotive, car restoration, custom car, expensive car, car test, car review, car show, British car, British motoring, Lotus Elise Supersport

Id: Ny47kkZkn_A

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024