I have always found it intersting that a tire other than what Lotus puts on the Elise would be needed unless racing the car. The Elise handeliing was designed around the tires and the shocks, so if they are changed for any other reason than racing I believe the dynamics of the car are drastically changes. My mechanic says that the stock tire on the Elise are without a doubt the best choice for road and track. Check out the owner comments on Tirerack.com for the road choices and you might come to the same conclusion. Just my opinion.
IMHO, the old saw about using only OEM brand tires or OEM brand tires are optimized for the stock set-up is a bunch of who ha. This MIGHT be true if you drive your car like the engineers intended and your OEM tires happen to be from the same lot of tires the test tires happen to be from.
By the same logic you should utilize the same brand and grade of gasoline as specified by the engineer to get optimum engine performance. Since we don't import UK spec gasoline for our cars, this logic would indicate that Yanks are being cheated of performance! DANG! :wallbang: those crafty Brits did it to us again!
But let's be realistic, the performance of a tire varies from tire lot to tire lot. Tires (even unused) age with time and thus have variable characteristics over time. Heat cycles, tread depth, tire pressure, all have an impact upon tire performance when the rubber meets the road. There are too many variables that an engineer simply can not take into account in the real world, thus I am VERY skeptical that the old saw "OEM brand tires give the best performance" is true.
Another factor to consider, the Exige S has the Yoko AO48 LTS as the OEM stock tires. These tires are expensive to make because they are specialty tires for a specialty car, thus they are expensive tires to stock for a dealership / mechanic and even more expensive for the consumer. So do you think the mechanic has some motivation to up-sell the OEM stock tires he / she has on the shelf to keep that inventory moving? You bet he / she does! Keep the inventory turns high on those expensive tires and make more money! I'm sure that a mechnic's opinion would not be influenced by a customer decision that puts more money in his / her pocket.



Also let's face another reality, 99.9% of the driving public probably would not notice the difference in tire performance between premium high performance brands of tires. For 99% of the driving public, tires that hold air pressure and don't wear too quickly are sufficient. It is only when pushed to the limit of traction that premium high performance tires express the subtle differences in performance. IMHO, you'd have to be driving like a grade 10 idiot to be pushing the limits of traction on the street.
So the real questions goes back to the OP,....
What style of of driving?
Under what conditions?
What kind of performance?
How much money are you willing to spend?
Answer these questions and you'll be a long way to answering your own question.