I was starting to worry about Lotus. Even though I know it sells engineering expertise around the world, the "handling by Lotus" deal with Isuzu left a plasticky taste in my mouth. Then the Elise shone brightly, and there was hope. Shortly thereafter it was decided 340 of Chapman's fans should have the privilege of owning one of the purest street-legal driving machines ever produced; thus, the Lotus 340R was born.
Using the same bonded extruded aluminum chassis as the Elise, the 340R was developed in just nine short months. Called in to exact even greater precision from the suspension system was Eibach Springs, the owner of this particular jewel. Never intended for the U.S. market (the car would, after all, pose an enormous safety risk to Excursion owners), my time enjoying this car was spent lapping Buttonwillow Raceway on a day organized by Open Track.
Track goers sitting in the pits regarded the car like a cult movie star-novel, talented and not necessarily beautiful. Gunther von Hagen, the German artist who fashions his Korperwelten sculpture of plastified human musculature, would approve of the 340R. Extremely skeletal, the unifying design elements are carved as if speed itself eroded away all but the most necessary structural components.
Minimal padding in the Corbeau buckets proves a well wrought balance of adequate comfort and derriere adhesion to the exposed chassis. Also part of the R package are Schroth harnesses, a completely welcome inconvenience given the performance envelope of the car. Perhaps Nureyev could enter the car as gracefully as the car enters a turn, but the rest of us are doomed to hoist gangly limbs over the sill and collapse into the Spartan interior.
Without other vehicles on track to help gauge speed, you'd never realize just how deceivingly quick this car is. Though you foolishly may think you're testing the car's limits, it is in fact testing yours. My time on track consisted of a Group 4 (fastest) time-trialing session. In the usual mix of Mustangs and fast front-drivers were a number of BMW CCA E30 and E36 M3 race cars out for practice. The 340R "Hoovered" the M3s with such rapidity I had to check the flag station to make sure it wasn't a cool-down lap. And this was driving beneath my limits, which are well below those of the car. Flaws inclusive, the car just works that well.
A stock 340R advertises 177 bhp, but Lotus is quick to suggest that for track use removal of the stock catalyst and fitment of an aftermarket exhaust would increase horsepower to 190. Eibach took the advice, using a stainless-steel and carbon-fiber-encrusted Janspeed exhaust system. The resultant guttural shriek, loud and siren sweet, fits the car's bird-of-prey-on-the-track demeanor. The 1.8L lump does little to hide its racing roots, a rumpity idle and peaky powerband defining its character.
Surprisingly, to induce power-on oversteer, only 4500 rpm was necessary in a constant-radius corner, quite an accomplishment for such a low-tech, high-horsepower roadster. Helpful was the close-ratio box pulled from the Elise 190, well suited for tight track use. The car is difficult to launch, surprising given the amount of horsepower. Give it a normal amount of throttle and the car will buck due to its light flywheel; slip the clutch and it will do its best impression of Cheech Marin. My guess is that a German John Force contributed several of the 5,000 or so miles already on the car.
Up to about eight-tenths the 340R behaves like a typical student racer open-wheel car-pushy, tight and very well mannered. This is probably in no small part due to the fact Eibach provides a near identical suspension set for Formula Fords. Lean into it, however, and it handles like a proper sports car. Both trail braking and dropping throttle mid-corner sufficiently unload the rear tires for as much or little oversteer as you ask of it. Turn-in is so immediate that on my first few laps I found myself turning in early every turn, hardly believing I could wait as long as was possible. Perhaps one of the most pleasurable parts of driving a go-kart is turning the steering wheel a quarter turn and have the kart turn an appreciable amount. So it was with the 340R. Well weighted and providing optimal feedback, the translation between desired action and result was immediate.
Tire choice was made with great care by Lotus. The Yokohama A038 is billed as designed by Yokohama in conjunction with Lotus, and the compound takes a surprisingly long time to get up to temperature, likely due to the car's anorexic sub-1,500-lb weight. Given the tire's near-racing compound, it is possible that these set of tires had simply been heat cycled too many times in the car's 5,000 miles and were simply hard. Cold, however, the tires still generated more grip than most supercars will ever see. The Yokos are wrapped around particularly clunky looking Rimstock wheels, not the promised Technomagnesio magnesium pieces, an order the manufacturer was unable to fill. Pity. Using the same brakes as the heavier Elise 190, the 340R delivers uncompromised braking performance, with the minimal travel pedal and linear action usually reserved for dedicated race cars.
Something I certainly did not expect from Lotus, and especially from a track special, was the rear fender crashing into the taillight assembly under full compression and marring the paint. Dave Royce, suspension development manager of Eibach, was surprised with supposedly factory suspension settings and was certain that he could dial out this nasty behavior by playing with ride height and the adjustable Koni dampers.
The result of an absolutely successful quest to produce one of the most rewarding machines ever to reach the hands of (few) enthusiasts will henceforth serve as personal proof of what can be. Like a bad child and great car, the 340R was heard but not seen, removing itself to leave the pilot only to pursue driving nirvana. Few cars provide a shorter path.