This Big Winged Monster Is The Most Extreme Lotus Elise We've Ever Seen

We love a good underdog here at Car Throttle, and Lee Connor’s extreme, be-winged Lotus Elise is exactly that. It’s been built on an incredibly tight budget from a regular Series 1 Elise 111S, all in Lee’s garage. The intention is to eventually compete in the Time Attack UK championship, where regulations allow for vast technical freedom, resulting in some incredible machinery decked out in all kinds of aerodynamic devices.

As a consequence, this Elise looks absolutely mad. And yet, it’s still road legal. When we were filming this machine for its upcoming CT Readers’ Rides video, it had more ‘double takes’ than anything we’ve ever shot, McLaren 12C included. Passers by simply haven’t seen anything like it on the road.

Lee managed to get a slight head start in this incredible project by purchasing an Elise which already had a whole host of tasty parts added to it, including a Turbotechnics supercharger kit with new rods and pistons, a quickshifter, and upgraded brakes to name just a few. Much of the standard Elise bodywork soon disappeared, to be replaced with a replica Exige body made to the exact diolen/fibreglass blend Lee specified.

While re-bodying the car, Lee also got to work on the aero, which left him with a dilemma. Complex aero packages like the ones seen in Time Attack really need wind tunnel testing or CFD (computational fluid dynamics) data to see how effective they are, but Lee’s extraordinarily tight budget allows for neither.

His solution has been to research aerodynamics extensively, and closely follow some of the designs used by other Time Attack competitors, particularly another Elise currently running in the championship. Sourcing leftover carbonfibre from various places for either free or very little money, Lee set about crafting the bombastic aero package, paying close attention to what he’d learnt, as well as wind tunnel data from the fellow Time Attack Elise.

Everything has been crafted by Lee himself in his garage. The most significant pieces are clear for all to see: the gigantic rear wing, the massively protruding rear diffuser, the extended side skirts and the front splitter. Of course, until he can get it on track for proper testing, there’s no way to know for sure what has worked and what hasn’t, but Lee is realistic about the long journey of tweaking and modifying the aero that lies ahead.

Mechanical grip has also been worked on extensively. The wheels and tyres are now considerably wider, and Lee is running a set of beefy Nitron dampers with stiffer springs all round. The brakes have been uprated, with large SEN Lotus discs going in at each corner.

The supercharger gave up the ghost fairly early on in the build, so Lee has since switched to a turbo set up. The 1.8-litre Rover K-Series lump currently runs around 300bhp. Considering the whole car weighs just under 700kg, this makes for one very potent Elise. And if it can generate as much downforce as the other Time Attack Elise, it’ll be producing a massive 600kg at 145mph. Context? That’s a similar figure to what a McLaren P1 generates at the same speed.

Not everyone is a fan of Lee’s work, though. He’s posted a build thread on numerous online forums, where many have entirely dismissed his efforts, claiming that he’s just been bolting on bits of mad aero without any clue as to what he’s doing. Others, meanwhile, take exception to Lee’s commendable decision to use the car on the road where possible, rather than save it just for the occasional track outing.

Whatever people say, and whether or not he finds success on track, Lee has won our unwavering respect. Anyone who takes it upon themselves to build something as bonkers as this in their own garage is just fine by us.

Want to know more? The full Readers’ Rides video feature on this Lotus Elise will be out in the coming weeks. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss it!