Perhaps this conflict comes from spending a lifetime lusting after modified cars, but it can feel difficult to name a vehicle that combines all my favorite details. One car may have the chassis I want, but another the powertrain, and another yet the styling. If you have talent, time, money or, quite unlikely, all three, you can create the car of your dreams.
The vast majority of us though will have to settle for buying whatever is available. In this case however, what was available to a friend was this single car combining some of the best bits in the business – Honda’s venerable B18C5 and a Lotus S1 Elise chassis. Perhaps “settle” only describes the movement you make once you’ve nailed the ingress.
The video will have most of my other thoughts, but the one I didn’t remember to share was just how compliant this car is. If I recall correctly this car is fitted with the Nitron dampers Elise owners rave about, but those words hardly convey how composed this car is on a bumpy California backroad. Staring at this sub-ton kiddie pool of a car, sitting as low as it does, surfaces memories of pogo-ing over surfaces and gritting your teeth through the scuttle shake of lesser vehicles.
Not so in the Elise. It simply floats over every undulation and broken bit of asphalt. And not in a Buick Roadmaster style float, but an improbable mixture of composure, fluidity, and grip, where you somehow never seem to run out of travel, and each tire maintains its purchase even on mid-corner heaves. It’s fantastic.
Anyways, the main thing I can really share in this format is the noise. So go ahead and click on vid. VTEC awaits.