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The Lotus Elise is a two-seat, rear-wheel drive, mid-engined roadster conceived in early 1994 and released in September 1996 by the British manufacturer Lotus Cars. The car has a hand-finished fibreglass body shell atop its bonded extruded aluminium chassis that provides a rigid platform for the suspension, while keeping weight and production costs to a minimum. The roadster is capable of speeds up to . The Elise was named after Elisa, the granddaughter of Romano Artioli who was chairman of Lotus and Bugatti at the time of the car's launch. ==Series 1== The 1996 Lotus Elise weighed .〔 Because of this low weight, it was able to accelerate 0- in 5.8 seconds despite its relatively low power output of .〔 Braking, cornering, and fuel consumption are also improved by the car's reduced weight. Series 1 was designed by Julian Thomson, then head of design at Lotus, and Richard Rackham, Lotus's chief engineer.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=My Other Design is a Lotus )〕 Besides the standard higher-performance variants listed below, Lotus also released some limited edition models such as Sport 135 (1998/9) with approx , Sport 160 (2000) with , and Sport 190 (). These were more competent on track with sports suspension, wheels and tyres, seats according to model. There were other special editions such as the 50th Anniversary Edition (green/gold) celebrating 50 years of Lotus cars, the Type 49 ("Gold Leaf" red and white two-tone), and Type 79 ("JPS" black/gold) which refers to its successful Grand Prix car type numbers. The Series 1 Lotus Elise was briefly assembled on a dedicated assembly line at Proton's factory between 1997 and 2000. The Malaysian-assembled Elise costs less than its British-assembled counterpart as it was manufactured with more Malaysian-sourced components.〔 Proton and Lotus had also marketed the Malaysian-assembled Elise to several Asian markets, including Japan.〔 However, parent-company Proton had been severely affected by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which brought an early end to the Malaysian assembly of the Lotus Elise in late 2000, only 3 years after it commenced and with an estimated 150 units sold.〔 The last Malaysian-assembled Elise was delivered in December 2002.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lotus Elise」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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