I personally curate this collection of Honda-powered Lotus videos for my own and now your enjoyment:

Mostly, it’s what helps me through this build, to remind me why, and feed my need… if only as a tease (sometimes excruciating)!

After some months (about 4 or 5k miles) I finally found a used Greddy supercharger/Katana mounting kit, on lotustalk. It arrived somewhat disheveled, but serviceable. A good friend–actually, good mechanic and a great friend–did the Lion’s share of the install in his garage.

The effects were immediate, and inspiring. It didn’t take long to get used to the welcome addition of +50 WHP.

The vision function/”charlie-x” tune certainly smoothed out the cam switch, and if just slightly on the rich-running side, it worked very well over all. More the Elise a.k.a. “baby supercar” I’d hoped for and expected all along. The supercharger and tune along with Cup airbox and HKS exhaust proved enough to get comfortable with, and all-in-all it certainly held me over through 2012, which saw my first track days at Sonoma and Thunderhill with NASA. By this time the hardtop and Lotus LSS wheels were added.

2013 found me realizing a life-long dream of running at Leguna Seca. Love at first lap. Okay, maybe third. I “heart” NCRC!

I took my time to learn the line (a line, at least) and picked up some speed, gradually. What I thought would be hard seemed easy, and visa versa. From this point I start studying harder the art and science of driving faster (not studying faster to drive harder).

And yes, the gentleman in the “live axle” Mustang did let me pass (per flag), even if on the straight he could always pull away in front. And therein lay the rub… Colin Chapman himself famously said, “Adding power makes you faster on the straights. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere”. True that.

When last at Thunderhill I rolled it on the scales for 2140 lbs., driver included. I need to lose some weight! Let’s say fighting weight would be 2100 even. 2000 even sounds better. But then the car will have to shed fat too. Or air conditioning. Perhaps then we’d both lose weight.

How I’d love a heads-up display of real-time per-wheel 3-D dynamic force!

I drive in part to compete with and challenge myself, to sharpen my focus-ability, and mediate fear-responses with knowledge, discipline, and understanding. But mostly, just to fly. Maybe later I’ll challenge others too.

It is indeed a simply fascinating machine.

My Bordeaux Red 2005 Lotus Elise arrived in March of 2012. Stock, save for

• Bilstein Track Pack shocks (used)
• BOE toe links
• New A-arm bushings
• Braded oil lines/connectors

Such a wonderful car to drive. All of the things a Lotus is known for and ‘should’ be: light, nimble, “spirited”, and precise. A extremely distinct-feeling car. A driver’s dream car. Most mass production cars drive similarly. They’re mush. There are exceptions. German, mostly. Going from BMW’s and Ford’s and Toyota’s to an Elise is like being used to a butter knife, and being handed a surgeons scalpel.

Jeramy Clarkson’s description of the Elise as a baby supercar has somehow stuck.

Once I got used to driving a scalpel, I began to feel what it was missing. For the adage “if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” I put it on the dyno. I needed to calibrate my butt.

Casey Horner of Enginetiks kindly put the Elise on his dyno:

It took a little while to this link data to my experiences, and set my butt straight. But soon I saw the writing on the chart, and started calling around and reading up on how to climb to about 250 WHP. It quickly came as a disappointment to find the retail cost of wringing that power increase out of the Toyota/Yamaha 2zz-ge plant. Its spirit, however willing, starts slightly weak in the flesh. Such that major bionics are required to boost its performance to contemporary standards. Even then, the legacy internals would remain weak, as evidenced by horror stories of catastrophic failures first track day out. In numbers, in fact.

Is “2 zzzz….” more indicative of the little engine’s personality? I would have to do what I could to help it drive like it should!