I would love to test drive it someday. It's lightweight and seems easy to toss around the corners with.

 

people might critize me, but bro the elise has a toyota celica motor in it. now i know with that motor and the weight of the whole car it would be a good power to weight ratio. but i mean its about what $40,000? i wouldnt pay 40 grand for a suposedly super with a toyota motor in it. just my 2 cents. 40 grand you want a european super car go for an m3 or maybe a boxster S.

 

boxster s

 

I have both cars, they are so different I'm not you can really compare them.
Couple things, if you get the Elise with the sport pack it will have lots more grip than a stock Evo, the standard Elise has very similar tires to the Evo so grip is closer, but then you add the lightweight and its still not the same. Also the Elise has a slower steering ratio but also a much smaller wheel base, which makes it feel like a faster ratio than in other cars with the same ratio.
If you look at magazine testing , the cars are simlar in the quarter and 0-60. The reason is, you can launch an Elise really really hard because most of the wieght starts on the drive wheels and the situation just gets better once you let the clutch out. I have seen stock 60 foot times of 1.7 for an Elise, check out the Elisetalk forums for more info. They routinely out launch stock class Z06's at Pro solo events (Both cars on R compounds).
I love the Evo as a daily driver, four doors, power , handling, FAR easier to get in and out of If you're never going to do track events or Solo2 there is really no reason to get an Elise.
The Elise is insane on a Solo2 course, both performance wise and fun factor!
The Toyota motor and tranny is a reason to buy an Elise, not a reason not to buy it. If it had some lotus developed engine it would be at the shop all the time, ask any Esprit owner. Lotus is a very small company, they do not have resources to do toyota like engine developement and testing. My closest dealer is 4 hours away so I would not have been able to get one if it had a lotus developed motor.
The reason the car is expensive is because you are paying for the light weight. The frame and many other parts are all aluminium. You are also paying for other things like fully sorted racing suspension and racing brake system.
The fact is, stock for stock, on a given tire compound, there is not really another production car that will hang with it in the turns, simply because of the weight. Of course you can get other kit cars like a noble or the atom that are light, but they are not production cars. You can get a used Elise for like $35k~40k, usually they are in great condition, and again the toyota motor/tranny is your friend in the used market.

 

The Toyota 2zz was actually developed by Yamaha. The only flaw it has is the poorly setup cam changeover. With good tuning the engine can be made much more useable and enjoyable by lowering the changeover. Those that swap in a K20 have no reason for it. There are f/i kits for both engines and they both end up at around the same power. Even if you want to keep them n/a the 1.8L isn't that far behind the 2.0L in terms of attainable power, but for the cost of the K20 alone you can have a turbo/supercharged 2zz. You can also stroke the 2zz a bit to negate any lowend concerns.

In the end I would love to own both cars, regardless of the original label on the engine.

 

Lotus purchase the Toyota motor for $2,000 and start tweaking it. What happened to the $40,000 plus? There's no way that the suspension and the aerospace bonding technology for chasis would cost that much.

 

Are you nuts? The elise has absolutly no torque below 3500rpm.. The elise gets max torque "133" at 6800rpm. Oh yeah...

 

Uhhh sure buddy, the only thing they talk about on that forum that compares to drag racing is they wonder why the cant even get into the 13 sec bracket in the 1/4, the fastest 1/4 for the elise that I have witnessed is a 13.6 I have never seen an elise run a 1.7 60ft, A 2.0 - 2.2 is more like it.