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Originally Posted by transio
You really believe that?
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Yeah, I suppose so. At least, I've no reason not to believe it. I never worked at Lotus or investigated it heavily or anything, though.
They invested a lot of development time and money into creating the car. They came up with a rather innovative suspension design to help make it work. I would sooner believe they did that because they believed it could work than believe they did it all as a marketing ploy.
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Originally Posted by bhtooefr
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Interesting read, thanks for digging it up.
All cars are compromises, even sports cars. When talking about one can have a faster lap time with x vs y, that's true of even the most hardcore sports car. It could always be faster. But if you make a car that is only fast around a track, damn the expense or functionality, don't plan on it being much of a sales success.
On the topic of the Elan, perhaps they felt FWD was a compromise that wouldn't hurt performance in any meaningful way, but offered other benefits. I.e. a compromise... I can see how they might want to stick with mid-engine RWD or front-engine FWD, because it enables them to use the X-frame type of backboned chassis that Lotus seems to love. If you want a car with a decent trunk and daily usability, mid-engined is generally not the way to go.
What they ended up with was a car that's within about 150lbs of the Elise, has an actual trunk (with room for a convertible top even), and a reasonably spacious interior.
One could probably argue that compared to its contemporaries, it was in a similar bracket performance-wise as the Elise is today. Though they didn't share the same sales success. The reasons for that could be the stigma you all are representing so well of FWD, the price, the market at the time (sports cars were on the downturn in the mid 90's), or who knows what.