Carrying on with my obsession with all things Lotus 7 comes official news about the Caterham R500 Superlight.

As is Caterham’s habit, the thing will be powered by a Ford 4 cylinder engine. In this case a 263 HP 2.0L Duratec mated to either a six-speed manual or a way cool six speed sequential box. No more round section A-arms up front, now it sports aerodynamically shaped suspension members. Also, the its graced with 13 inch anthracite wheels as well as launch control. The weight is not yet specified (the last Superlight tips the scales at less than a thousand pounds). We do know the price & the zero-to-60 times:

£37,000 it’ll get you to 60 in under 3 seconds.

More pictures after the jump.

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What’s that old joke about it being a good thing that England is an island because the British are, by and large, nuts?

Well here’s example #645,643,985.

The car in question is a Dax Rush, essentially one of umpteen copies of the seldom equaled Lotus 7.

What differentiates this particular Dax Rush from all the others is it’s choice of engines.

Sure sure, there have been 7s with V8s, V6s all manner of turboed and supercharged 4 bangers, not to mention three versions that have high output bike engines (Hyabusa, Fireblade, and one other I can’t think of at th’mo), and one that has a V8 made from two Hyabusa fours (because the regular Hyabusa is such a wimpy mill), but this one has got to take the cake.

This one, is powered by a turbine engine form a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.

I’ll say that again, just to make sure you heard me: this one, is powered by a turbine engine.

Now, I can find nothing about how this car drives, and, sadly, I’m pretty sure that it probably won’t be that much fun, or as much fun as you’d think. See, turbines are fine, if expensive powerplants. They’re low maintenance (relatively), they can run on a variety of fuels, quiet (in certain ways) and really, really efficient for their size & power output.

They have one big flaw when it comes to auto applications though: they take weeks to accelerate.

From the time you stand on the gas of a turbine, it has to suck in a lot of air, run it through a fan that has to spool up to a certain RPM, that air gets compressed, then it is run through more (sometimes several, in the case of airplanes) fan stages, each taking time to get up to speed, has some fuel injected into the compressed air, then the whole thing is set afire and then you finally get the power output you’ve been waiting for.

Decades ago, Chrysler looked into building turbine cars for the road, they even build a couple dozen as working prototypes. I remember reading R & T’s test of it; they said it was amazingly smooth & quiet and it would get beaten off the line by an ice cream truck.

Remember when Andy Granatelli ran the STP sponsored turbine cars at Indy? Look at any of the restarts and you’ll see what I mean.

So sadly, I bet this 7 variant is a nicely done engineering exercise, but not nearly as fun as you’d think.

Oh, and I read about this on Jalopnik, in case you’re wondering.

More pictures after the jump.

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OK, by now it should be readily apparent that this is my kind of a car. I LOVE light-weight, bare-bones, handling-above-all-else sports cars. Lotus 7s, Miatas, MR2s, Elises, Ferrari Dino 206S,those are my kind of rides. If I could figure out how to get a Formula Ford licensed for street use, I’d do it by sundown tomorrow - I swear I would.

So when Lotus says that they’re taking their already highly desirable 2-eleven and making an entry level version of it (essentially they dropped the power plant from the Elise R into this version of the 2-Eleven), I am SO there.

The whys and wherefores are pretty impressive:

189hp naturally aspirated engine, weight of only 720kg (that’ll be around 1600 pounds here in the U.S. of A.), zero to 60mph in just 4.3 seconds, top speed of 140mph.

And the options are just as tasty:

Two different limited slip differentials, an FIA approved 70 liter bag fuel tank, a removable competition steering wheel, a carbon fiber tonneau cover, four piston front brakes and an Aero accessories pack consists of an adjustable carbon fiber rear wing and a lengthened composite front splitter. The Sport accessories Pack adds Ohlins two-way adjustable dampers.

Great right?

Of course, there’s problems … three problems as near as I can tell:

1 - The price starts at €34,695 (which is, what, around $53,204.58 since the dollar is dropping as fast as W’s approval ratings)
2 - It’s a track only car
3 - You can’t get it in the US anyway

They need to make this car cheaper (low to mid 20s would be good), road legal and import the damn thing … alas (sigh) …

More pictures after the jump … now somebody out there get me street legal Formula Ford!

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At first, I just shook my head, not sure if this was a good thing at all … but then that passed, I came to my senses, and thought, “Yes. Yes, this is a very good thing.”

The short version is this. There’s these guys, RS Performance, who are obviously mad as hatters. A while back they announced they were going to make an engine comprising of two Hyabusa engines fused at the crank case … essentially a small, 2.4 liter V8 that revs like a dentist drill, and, for its size, put out a lot of power. Like around 500 BHP.

They they got the (great) idea of putting it into a significantly lighter Caterham 7 chassis (carbon fiber wherever they could put it, that sort of thing).

The bottom line is this: It has the power, size, weight, and, with the current tire technology, the performance of a Grand Prix car, circa 1970.

Yes, it’s way too expensive ($230K), but this make me think of one thing: The Nurburgring.

More photos and full press release and all the sordid details after the jump.

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Following up on Chris’s post from Wednesday about whether a hybrid can be a performance car (I say yes, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be). I have a modest proposal:

Take a Caterham 7 chassis (see picture above), no drivetrain needed, just the differential.

Bolt an electric motor directly to the diff. Don’t mess around, get something like the starter motor out of an ocean going tug. An electric motor with enough torque and power to send a pound of bacon to the asteroid belt.

Next, to the motor you hook up a couple of high performance capacitors and a couple, maybe four, batteries (the caps are for bursts of power, the batteries are for sustained usage).

Hooked up to the batteries (through a controller, natch) is a diesel-fueled generator; you know, something like a little household generator. Fuel it with bio-diesel, and locate it in the engine bay, just on the other side of the fire wall (centralize the mass boys, always centralize the mass). In front of the gen-set goes the batteries, in front of them, goes the capacitors. Continue Reading…

Lotus is celebrating their 40th Anniversary of production by releasing a limited edition, Europe-only version of the Elise S. They will only release 50 of these cars in total, distributing most of them to Germany and Switzerland.

Each one of the cars will be coated with a cool-looking burnt orange paint, with color-matching calipers, interior trim, and stitching. They will also get special “Limited Edition” badges, numbered build plates, and a letter signed by Lotus CEO Mike Kimberly.

The new color looks great (I’ve always loved burnt orange,) but there just isn’t enough different to make it worth a special purchase. Hopefully they won’t charge much more than the regular Elise S for this edition. Continue Reading…