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Almost Great: M100 Lotus Elan
2 years ago
The M100 Elan was penned by Peter Stevens
To attempt to prove this slightly depressing thesis, step forward, please, the last generation Lotus Elan, code-named M100. In the mid-1980s, Lotus was in dire trouble. Following the premature death of Colin Chapman in 1982, quite likely sparing him a lengthy prison sentence for his part in the DeLorean saga, his company tipped into a steeper-than-usual financial tailspin. It was bought out by General Motors in 1986, and for the first time in decades had solid financial backing. For once, it could afford to invest serious money into a new car.
And, to its credit, it really went for it. It had already hired a hot pencil, Peter Stevens, a few years earlier. The company had also been playing around with the idea of an all-new, modern sports car, aimed firmly at boosting its fortunes in the all-important US market, for a few years prior to the GM buyout. Various concepts and prototypes had been built, so now that there was cash in the bank, the development teams were champing at the bit. The result was to be the M100.
The engineering concept of the M100 is flawless: especially for a small-volume car maker like Lotus, whose entire reputation has been (still is, if we try to ignore EV behemoths like the Eletre and Emeya) based on light weight and agility. At its core was a Y-shaped steel backbone chassis – technology well understood by Lotus, cheap to tool up, light and stiff. Very stiff, in fact – it had an octagonal cross-section which made the M100 one of the stiffest convertibles ever built. It was properly galvanised too. Even three decades on, these cars have a pretty good reputation for resisting rust. Glass-fibre for the upper body – check. Again light, inexpensive in terms of investment, and Lotus knew well it was not competing with the Germans in terms of gap, flush and paint quality.
"Now let’s come to the engineering decision that made the M100 famous – or infamous. The engineers decided to put that peppy Isuzu lump under the bonnet, in an east-west configuration, driving – wait for it – the front wheels alone. A first and, at least to date, a last for any Lotus"
The clever choices continued to the powertrain – an off-the-shelf Isuzu 1.6-litre four-pot, which would be offered in both naturally aspirated and turbocharged form. This was a solid, dependable engine that kicked out 165bhp when turbocharged and in an era when breaking the 100bhp per litre barrier was very much the exception, even among forced induction engines.
Now let’s come to the engineering decision that made the M100 famous. Or infamous. The engineers decided to put that peppy Isuzu lump under the bonnet (or hood, y’all), in an east-west configuration, driving – wait for it – the front wheels alone. A first and, at least to date, a last for any Lotus.
And here, folks, is the point where the head overruled the heart. The Lotus team applied cold, hard logic and would later claim – with justification – that given the size, mass and power of the car, it would be faster point-to-point with front rather than rear-wheel drive.
Having made this choice, they did the job properly. Lotus engineers know their chassis onions – so they did not simply stick in a pair of MacPherson struts and go for a cup of tea. No, they cooked up a form of advanced front suspension that they called ‘interactive wishbones’. Both wishbones were attached to a subframe that Lotus dubbed the ‘compliance raft’. Stiff bushings were used between the wishbones and compliance raft to ensure good control of camber and the caster angles, hence calming torque steer. Relatively softer bushings were used between the compliance raft and main chassis to help with vertical compliance and hence ride quality. This tour de chassis force was complemented by a proper double wishbone setup controlling the rear axle. This was Lotus’s – extremely cerebral – answer to the traditional drawbacks of FWD.
“One could argue that the M100 died in the market before it was ever born. After Lotus announced that it would launch a front-drive sports car, enthusiast circles lit up with ‘what’s the world coming to?’ indignation”
The engineers did not stop there. With GM’s accountants paying the bills, they were able to develop the car properly to belie the old jibe of Lots of Trouble, Usually Serious. The M100 was tested and developed like no Lotus before – not just a few flat-capped lads haring around the Hethel track, but proper, big-company testing including dozens of crash tests, hot and cold weather testing from Arizona to the Arctic, and a well-publicised 24-hour high-speed endurance demonstration/test at Snetterton. Each production car was also given a 30-mile shakedown drive before shipping to make sure they were not only designed right, but built right too.
Now, I’m not the best qualified on the Ti team to comment on the design, but in my very humble opinion, the shape that Peter Stevens draped around the FWD hardpoints was a fine piece of work. It’s taut, fuss-free and I think it’s aged rather well. Okay, the shutlines reveal a faint whiff of caravan-glass-fibery, but on the whole it’s a looker. I also love the way the typically-1990s modest rims and tyres don’t make it look over-wheeled. But then I would.
If there were any justice in this world, the last Elan should have been a great car. But the fact that you’re reading about it here, in this series, shows once again how cruel the automotive world can be.
One could argue that the M100 died in the market before it was ever born. After Lotus announced that it would launch a front-drive sports car, enthusiast circles lit up with ‘what’s the world coming to?’ indignation. Lotus, the hairiest-chested of sports car makers (with the possible exception of that hirsute-of-torso Blackpool lot) making a car with a drivetrain that everyone knew was just for little shopping hatchbacks? How dare they?! It could not possibly be any good. It would torque-steer off the road, and just how could it be drifted through the bends like all proper drivers do every day?
The 50,000th Lotus was actually an M100 Elan
I sometimes complain about the gentlepersons of the press killing a car unjustly. I can’t make that complaint about the M100. When the car was launched in 1989, they almost universally lauded it. Road testers had the skills – and honesty – to recognise the excellence of the engineering, and the genius of the way that Lotus had engineered out the theoretical limitations of the FWD layout. Autocar even confirmed Lotus’s claim, stating that it was indeed the fastest car in its class, point-to-point.
Sadly, the positive press did not help the car much. It launched as the world was stumbling bleary-eyed and hungover from the party of the 1980s into the cold, grey financial dawn of the 1990s. And it could never shake off that image of the sports car that was driven from the wrong end, or ‘incorrect-wheel drive’ as the more diehard breed of road testers called it. A thousand BMW ads had convinced enthusiastic drivers that only rear-wheel drive cars counted – everyone knew that real drivers only used the front wheels for steering.
To be fair, it was not just a perception issue – there was also a cost problem. When production stopped in 1992 a turbocharged Elan (in reality the ‘atmo’ car sold in tiny numbers) cost nearly £24,000 when Mazda would sell you either an open top, rear-drive MX-5, or a closed, 2+2 MX-3 for little more than £15,000. The Elan was faster than either and certainly better to drive than the FWD MX-3, but in those straitened times, those numbers spoke louder. It was put back into production two years later when enough spare bits were found to produce an ‘S2’ version which was much improved, but only 800 were built and all for the UK market.
Its story finally concluded 1995, with fewer than 5000 cars being built though Lotus did sell the design and tooling to Kia, who continued to build the car in South Korea with its own engine until 1999 – adding just over 1000 more units. Even so, it has to be judged a commercial failure.
So, back to my thesis at the outset. The Elan M100 failed because purists believed that only rear-wheel drive cars were worthy of their attention. I would argue that it was the Lotus team, ironically, that was too purist – they engineered a car that was great on paper, and their approach was technically correct. Nor did they drop the ball in the design studio – the M100 is a neat-looking car. The whole team – marketing, product planning, design, engineering and manufacturing – did a really smart job.
And there’s the rub. It’s not enough to be smart. The best cars are a blend of emotion, indefinable ‘feeling’, great design and smart engineering. Just having the latter does not cut it. In the Elan M100, Lotus designed a great quartz watch. But the world wanted a mechanical movement.
