Thinking of buying my first Lotus

[Hadrian]

I'd be grateful for any advice please and I'm new to the forum.

I'm not a novice at track days and have been doing them for a few years now, firstly in a Westfield Megablade and then a bespoke AB performance Sabre with Honda Fireblade power. Both were awesome but I always struggled with noise test.

I've decided to move away from a bike engine car and am seriously thinking about my first lotus. I'm thinking of purely track day use and would trailer the car.

From all I've read on this forum and others my short list with a budget of around £32k is between an Exige S or a 2-eleven. I must admit I'm a fan of open top driving though.

What advice would you give to a lotus newbie on this choice?

Accusump seems essential but is a baffled sump only optional for a non racer on UK circuits?

I've always used Toyo R888s on previous cars, is this a good choice for either of the above cars?

Examples of what I've looked at are;

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/l...

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/l...

Should I be looking at an Elise within my budget with similar performance to a 2-eleven?

I'm grateful for any advice

Hadrian

[peter2704]

I'd go supercharged elise (SC) ,plenty of poke and open top.

[Fulham71]

Or this one, but then I'm biased

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/l...

[Fulham71]

Or this one 😉

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/l...

[RobM77]

I owned an Elise for 8 years and a 2-Eleven for three. I've test driven quite a few Exige Ss. The 2-Eleven for me is the ultimate for circuit use - it has a very distinct lightweight and race car like feel compared to the others and compared to other road cars absolutely flew on track days; in fact I'm not sure a single road car overtook me in three years of trackdays with the car.

My only issues with the 2-Eleven were the rearward weight balance, but to be honest you get that with any modern Lotus, and the cold and noise getting to and from the circuit, but you've said you'll be trailering the car so that won't be an issue for you.

My 2-Eleven is actually up for sale again, although at a rather high price.

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/l...

[Boggy]

http://forums.seloc.org/

Few more owners and opinions however be careful with grammar etc there are a few keyboard warriors.

Boggy

[TheRocket]

I had a similar dilemma at the end of last year coming from a bike engined car. After a lot of research on here and Seloc I decided that a Honda engined S1 Elise was the way to go. I ended up with a Supercharged Honda S1 which I've yet to put on a track but this car here might be close to what you are looking for

http://classifieds.seloc.org/ads/1998-honda-powere...

it's not yet supercharged but well within your budget and tbh some people think the NA cars make a better track day car anyway.

Good luck