The Lotus 3-Eleven is a 0-door speedster from Lotus, built from 2015 to 2019, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. Under the bonnet: 3.5 . Russell Carr drew it.
Where it came from
The Lotus 3-Eleven is a sports car produced by British car manufacturer Lotus Cars. The car is available as a racing version as well as a normal road legal version.
Unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2015, it was launched in 2016 at a price of £82,500 for the road version (plus VAT) (£116,500 (including VAT) for the race version) and limited to a production run of 311 units worldwide. In February 2018, the road version received cosmetic and mechanical updates like the rest of the Lotus line up for the final run of production with engine power increased to 430 hp (436 PS; 321 kW) and performance similar to the race version. The upgraded car is known as the 3-Eleven 430.
Under the skin
Power comes from 3.5 . It weighs 925 kg. It shifts through a 6-speed Aisin AI manual transmission / manual (road version) / 6-speed Aisin AI IPS sequential manual transmission / sequential (race version). The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Lotus 2-Eleven; assembly was at Hethel, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ferrari 488, the Ford Escort — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Lotus catalogue sit the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 101.