What’s astonishing about the 2-Eleven’s performance is not the outright numbers, but the conditions in which it proved them. On the day we took the 2-Eleven to MIRA, it was for the most part very wet. And for the rest it was, at best, a bit damp.
During our acceleration runs it was dry enough only to confirm that Lotus is not being optimistic when it suggests the 2-Eleven is a 3.8sec-to-60mph car. We’ve no doubt that if the Yokohama Advan A048s were allowed to operate with some heat, we’d have bettered 4.0sec to 60mph.
However, the 2-Eleven isn’t helped here by its frankly iffy gearshift. At its best it’s merely unobtrusive; at its worst it’s difficult and notchy. Good job, then, that the supercharged engine is far more flexible than 140bhp per litre would suggest. It’s tractable at any speed, is relatively strong above 2500rpm and comes into its own at about 5000rpm.
The 2-Eleven also has among the best set of stoppers we’ve tried. Even during track testing there was absolutely no brake fade. Granted, the 2-Eleven weighs just 755kg, but even so a 60-0mph time of just 2.45sec is astonishing. They’re servo-assisted and – to the chagrin of some original Elise fetishists – have anti-lock. We’d like a little less assistance at the top of the pedal, and although we entered the anti-lock zone sooner than we wanted while trailing the brakes into one of the turns on track, we’d rather have that than a lock-up.
