What is it?
Lotus’s fastest production car ever. One of the very quickest road cars ever around the Nürburgring A product of Hethel’s motorsport wing, not its automotive department.
Yep, it’s the 3-Eleven and all the above statements are true. The base underpinnings are from a road car, though: the Exige donates its bonded aluminium chassis and supercharged 3.5-litre V6 engine. You can pick up a hint of the family resemblance from the front intakes and lights, but in a drastic bid to cut weight, the body panels are carbon fibre.
There’s not many panels, either…
Yep, it’s another lightweight British sports car with no doors, roof or windscreen. Two versions are available, Road or Race. Road has 410bhp, a six-speed manual gearbox, and weighs 925kg, while Race receives a full suite of motorsport parts: adjustable Ohlins dampers, carbon seat, removable steering wheel, front canards and a six-speed Xtrac gearbox nabbed from Lotus’ GT3 racer. You can have an FIA-complaint cage fitted, full datalogging, and you can even take it racing. It’s a very serious bit of kit, even by track day standards.
Quite an upgrade from Road to Race…
It is, but you do have to pay for it. While the Road version costs £82,500, the Race is £116,500, a step up of £34,000. Painful, but it’s also worth mentioning it weighs 35kg less and has another 50bhp, yielding a power to weight ratio of 517bhp/ton. Like a Veyron…
Tell me some more numbers.
Besides the one beginning with the pound sign? OK, 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds, 0-100mph in six flat, 1.5g through corners, a Nürburgring lap time of smack on seven minutes. That’s Porsche 918 Spyder and McLaren P1 fast. Pretty hectic.
So what’s it like?
The speed is the first thing that catches you. Because there’s so much of it, and it’s so vicious and relentless. All the sensations are ramped up because of your exposure, as you sit, head poked out of this covered bathtub into a world that’s fast-forwarding around you.
With 64 per cent of the weight on the back axle there are no traction issues, and the gearing is short so the combined effects of 460bhp and 387lb ft means the 3-Eleven pummels gears two through six into submission so each becomes a brief, barely punctuated explosion of momentum, to the accompaniment of shrill supercharger and rasping exhaust. It sounds like a very large, very angry swarm of wasps.
Scary or just exciting?
Addictive. Because it pulls off the trick of feeling massless, like there’s no inertia to overcome. The supercharger’s pulley response is incredible – it’s like the best naturally aspirated engine you can imagine, but with the instant hit of a sledgehammer. The initial kick forces the air from your lungs, which is instantly thrust back in due to the fact you’re now doing 100mph and your mouth and eyes are still big, shocked circles in your face.
I’m not sure I’ve felt acceleration quite like it in any other car I’ve driven. Partially this is down to the open cockpit experience, but more to the fact the 3-Eleven occupies an unusual position. It’s not as light as other lightweights such as the Caterham R620 or BAC Mono, but compensates with way more power and torque. And at the other end it’s so much more visceral and immediate than anything with a windscreen and roof, be it the McLaren P1 or Ferrari LaFerrari. Really.
There is something about supercharging a low mass car. A supercharged Ariel Atom, that comes close. It’s the utter instantaneousness of what happens the exact moment your foot comes in contact with the throttle pedal. It’s a
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