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Carsales Staff17 Sept 2015
NEWS

Fastest-ever Lotus road car blitzes the Nurburgring

Upcoming Lotus 3-Eleven shows true mettle, recording one of the fastest-ever laps around the Nordschleife

Lotus takes its design philosophies to the extreme with the roofless, windscreen-less and doorless 3-Eleven. Using a lightweight structure wrapped around a mid-mounted 336kW supercharged Toyota 3.5-litre V6, it rates as the fastest and most powerful road car ever to be made by the company.

Road car is a bit of a loose description.

The 3-Eleven is hardly the sort of thing you'd expect to take on a weekend away, or for a short trip to the local supermarket. Although it's available in two versions – as a pure racer or in supposedly more road-friendly form – it makes even the most dramatic mid-engined hyper coupe look positively luxurious.

In pursuit of the Lotus lighter-equals-faster mantra, the 3-Eleven replaces the previous 2-Eleven with an all-new, open-cockpit lightweight body that will seat two but is really more suited to just the driver, and is so purpose-built that it has an F1-style removable steering wheel to assist entry to the narrow, stripped-out cabin.

The fundamentals are certainly in place and, just recently, the British company had its hopes vindicated during an extended shakedown that saw the 3-Eleven recording one of the fastest-ever laps around the Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit in Germany.

Although there were limitations imposed on getting a clear run around the track – it was being used simultaneously by others during the 2000km or so logged up in two weeks of testing – adding together the fastest per-sector times resulted in an aggregate lap time of seven minutes and six seconds, which was within sight of the car's predicted ability to lap the Nurburgring in seven minutes even.

According to Marc Basseng, one of the three drivers who lapped the circuit in the 3-Eleven: "I know the Nurburgring Nordschleife very well and have driven many cars around the circuit. I can say that the 3-Eleven is the perfect car for a fast lap here. It is so sharp and so focussed; a true weapon! This was proven in the sector times set and I'm sure, with the track completely to itself, the car could push towards a seven-minute flat lap time."

The 3-Eleven is due to go into production in early 2016 at a predicted price of around $150,000 for the road-going version. The track version – complete with roll cage, lower-geared sequential manual gearbox and aero body package, is tipped to cost about $70,000 more. Word is that the company will build 311 3-Elevens over two years.

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