Car Show Classic: 1958 Lotus Elite — Plastic Soul

You have to hand it to Lotus: they sure knew how to enter the fray. I mean, think about other postwar prestige/sports marques’ first road car: the first Ferrari, the first Lamborghini, the first Facel-Vega or the first David Brown-era Aston. They were all rather unmemorable, frankly, though they paved the way for iconic models. With the Elite, Lotus set the bar as high as they could from the get-go, not unlike what Porsche did with the 356. But unlike the 356, the Elite was a financial failure for its maker. Or a learning experience, to remain positive.

Nobody had ever seen a car like the Elite. But therein lies the nub: it was so innovative that Lotus were barely able to manufacture it and it required so many post-launch fixes that it never turned a profit. Deeply flawed though it was, the Elite was brilliant in many ways. And singularly attractive, too.

Colin Chapman created Lotus in 1948 as a race/kit car company, initially based on prewar Austin 7 mechanicals. Soon, other engines would be used (Ford, Riley, BMC…) and Chapman branched out into Formula 2 by 1956. But launching a fully-finished car would await the launch of the Elite, known internally as the Type 14, in late 1957.

It was a masterstroke, from a PR perspective. The Lotus coupé was strikingly modern, aerodynamic and extremely light. It was powered by an all-alloy OHC straight-4 displacing only 1261cc made by Coventry-Climax. In this initial form, the little 4-cyl. produced 75hp – but it only had a little over 560kg to carry, so performance was impressive. The Lotus was the talk of the town, even though Colin Chapman expressly forbade any car being lent to the automotive press for a long-term test. Only a quick drive (usually on a test track), preferably under the watchful eye of a Lotus representative, could be arranged.

Designed by a team led by Peter Kirwan-Taylor, with a lot of input from aerodynamicist Frank Costin, the Elite certainly looked like nothing else in production at the time. The number of Cd=0.29 is brandied about quite a bit, which that seems suspiciously low for a car of this era. Mind you, the Elite is extremely low to the ground. That would become something of a Lotus speciality.

Another Lotus trait that was there from the start was the extensive use of glass-reinforced plastics. Here, Colin Chapman went way further than anyone had dared for a road car: not only the body panels and bodyshell, but the entire monocoque structure was GRP – essentially three pieces stacked on top of each other. There was a steel front subframe sandwiched within to anchor the engine, provide a frame for the windshield and points to attach the door hinges, but the rest of the car was all moulded resin and fiberglass.

Not content with all these innovations, the Lotus boys served up the Elite with highly advanced suspension as well. The front end’s double wishbone and coil setup was lifted straight out of the Formula 2 cars, but the real novelty was at the rear.

In another world-first, Colin Chapman took the MacPherson strut principle, but adapted it for the driving axle instead, leading to these impressive strut mounts poking into the cabin. Just a two-seater, then.

The dash looks surprisingly normal, compared to the rest of the car. That’s probably a conscious (and wise) decision on the part of Chapman et al., as there was no need to add more weirdness for its own sake. This wasn’t a Citroën. This was a sports car meant to be driven fast, so a clear layout with minimal distractions was a safer bet for all concerned.

Still, this is the one aspect of the Elite that really feels like the ‘50s. Not that I’m complaining. Final cherry on the top for the chassis specs: four-wheel disc brakes. In 1958, that was quite a thing.

It did not take long for problems to befall the Elite. The Coventry-Climax engine was not the easiest to keep in tune and had a tendency to develop oil leaks. Nothing major, just good old British workmanship, there. The electrics were not without faults, either – Lotus found out the hard way that grounding a GRP car is not a straightforward endeavour. The suspension, as sophisticated as it was, required precise tyre pressure (and tyre type) to function as designed. But there were far more serious issues with the body.

You know why nobody ever made a unit body sports car exclusively out of GRP? Because if the moulds are off by even a millimeter or the bonding of the layers isn’t absolutely perfect, the car will develop serious maladies before long. And so it was that Lotus’ initial GRP body supplier, Maximar Mouldings, did not provide top-quality material, causing most (if not all) early series cars’ bodies to be prone to cracking. The differential mounting was also a frequent failure point and both vibrations and noise levels could be uncomfortably high at certain rpms.

Lotus worked feverishly to find solutions to all these problems. The body issue was solved by switching in 1959 to the Bristol Aircraft Co., whose quality control was, by definition, aeronautics-grade. The engine was how it was, but at least Coventry-Climax managed to squeeze quite a bit more power out of it: 83hp were on the cards by 1959, then 95 and even 105 by late 1962.

The Elite’s many problems became known, also causing the famous “Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious” backronym to be born with the first road-going Lotus. Sales were not impressive, after the initial excitement, and the model was quietly pensioned off in 1964. About 1000 were made – at a loss, because of the unforeseen and extensive troubleshooting. A learning experience all around: the buying public now knew what a Lotus was, both on and off track, and Lotus learned that a steel backbone chassis could be a better bet than going plastic all the way. Their next car, the Elan, certainly showed that they could build durable sports cars.