The Lotus 3-Eleven is the most powerful road car to wear a Lotus badge and Hethel’s quickest ever road car.
It joins the ranks of those rare cars that can reach 60 mph in under three seconds and 100 mph in six seconds. To complement these figures, the Lotus 3-Eleven possesses a purity of the driving experience and the benchmark handling for which all Lotus cars are renowned, enabling a lap of the challenging Hethel circuit to be completed in 1 minute 19.5 seconds for the Race version.
Jean-Marc Gales, CEO of Group Lotus commented ”The Lotus 3-Eleven is a game-changing car, not only in terms of what has come before it from within our own rich heritage of sports cars, but also in terms of anything else comparable brought to market by any other manufacturer. Extreme, focused and phenomenal are all words that have been used to describe the 3-Eleven. This is a car that exists within an extremely rarified performance envelope – it offers both hypercar performance and handling. Nothing else provides a sensory overload of this nature, and all packaged under £100,000.”
With the standard lightweight carbon composite bodywork, the Lotus 3-Eleven has a dry weight of 890 kg and maximum power of 460 hp (Race version). It has an enviable power to weight ratio of 517 hp per tonne, and is capable of sprinting from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds and boasts a maximum speed of 180 mph (290 km/h). The Road version with a dry weight of 925 kg and a maximum power of 410 hp reaches 60 mph in 3.3 seconds before reaching a top speed of 174 mph (280 km/h).
Jean-Marc Gales continued, “I know that anyone who is fortunate enough to drive a 3-Eleven will be blown away by the performance that only adding lightness and power can give. However, to say that this car is the fastest road car that Lotus has ever produced only tells half the story. There are few cars on the market that can match the 3-Eleven, in looks, speed or lap times – it will reward those that are prepared to take the reins of the highest performing Lotus road car ever.”
Marc Basseng, Lotus 3-Eleven driver stated, “The 3-Eleven is the perfect car for a fast lap at the Nürburgring and is a sub 7 minute car in favourable conditions; a time like this puts the 3-Eleven firmly into hypercar territory and I cannot wait to drive the production version in a few months.”
Unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2015, the 3-Eleven will soon be entering production with deliveries of cars to customers from March 2016 onwards. The 3-Eleven will be an exclusive car with a total production run limited to 311 vehicles.
Prices start at £82,500 for the Road version (including VAT and on the road costs) and £97,083 excluding VAT for the Race version (£116,500 including VAT). The 3-Eleven will be sold in all markets as a Race car and in Europe and Asia as a Road car.
