A lot of people wrongly assume, that the 2-Eleven is just an Elise with the roof chopped off.
Regarding the chassis, the front half of it resembles an S1 with higher side sills to increase rigidity and safety and the rear half of the chassis resembles an S2.
Here's a good read about the birth of the 2-Eleven that covers a few other differences from the Elise/Exige :
The ‘Circuit Car’ was originally conceived and constructed by a ‘Saturday Club’ of Lotus employees, which included Tony Shute and Nick Adams. They pooled their ideas in after-hours brain-storming sessions and after only 11 weeks of spare-time spannering, the Circuit Car was a driveable reality, using an adapted supercharged Exige with an improvised lightweight body the story of the car which later appeared as the 2 eleven had begun.
Lotus announced their circuit car project by debuting it to the world at the Shelsly Walsh Centenary hillclimb event over the weekend of 19-21 Aug 2005. The car attracted considerable attention from both the motoring press and racing fraternity alike. After the cars initial outing and due in part to the amount of interest generated by the event 20 months of evolution and development began.
On taking the car back to Hethel they found that, due to changes to the rear wing and suspension set up made during it’s 5 runs (3 practice and 2 timed) over the weekend culminating in a best time of 33.13sec, the car was now regularly hitting 145mph on the back straight prior to the chicane where as before it topped out at 128mph. The car was sent up to the wind tunnel at MIRA, Nuneaton which turned out to be a worth while exercise and allowed significant improvements to be made around the front ducts and the wheelarch exit arrangements. Changes in these areas, together with greater attention to detail around the radiator ducting and exit area gave a very useful reduction in drag whilst improving the front end downforce. They also took the opportunity to optimise the location and angle of incidence for both the standard and optional wings and the front splitters, giving an excellent downforce balance for the non-adjustable standard setup and a useful range of complementary settings for the optional adjustable wings. The good news was that the drag reduction work, combined with the improved balance and downforce, had brought the car’s lap times down even further, with an indicated 150 now easily attainable on the run down to the Chicane on the back straight.
By modifying the front upper wishbone and the steering arm much improved camber and bump-steer curves were able to be generated which in turn gave a significant increase in front end bite. The high-speed balance of the car was now much improved, with better steering feel and weighting as an important by-product. The next phase of work in this area would be concentrating on the final specification of spring rates and damper tune to give the car that special Lotus ride and handling.
For the body work the team refined ideas and incorporated the lessons learned from the memorable 340R. They ditched the one piece body of the 340R that had been expensive to manufacture and repair and also had to be removed for any maintenance work to be carried out. Instead they constructed a new body made up of 13 individual panels made from ‘core-mat’ technology, a first for Lotus, in which a permeable mat is sandwiched between sheets of glassfibre and bonded with resin, which flows through the mat’s pores. Combining the strength and weight advantages of carbonfibre with the ease of manufacturing and cost-effectiveness of conventional glassfibre, the panels weigh in at only 40kg.
The chassis is a Unique high-sided variant of the Lotus Elise light weight structure featuring epoxy bonded aluminium alloy extrusions. Glass fibre composite front crushable structure allied to a high sill chassis for side impact protection, 6-point FIA compliant rollover structure with integral harness mounts and light weight galvanised steel rear sub frame incorporating a further crushable structure.
The engines were to be the familiar Toyota 1.8l VVTL-i (Variable Valve Timing and Lift - intelligent) mated to a Roots-type Eaton M62 supercharger with air-to-air intercooler to give a maximum power output of 252 bhp at 8,000 rpm and a maximum torque of 179 lb-ft at 7,000 rpm with a top speed of 150mph.
Initially released in ‘Launch Spec’ in March of ’07 all cars came with a raft of options bolted to the cars and the now distinctive black, silver and yellow colour scheme. They also had öhlins 2-way adjustable dampeners, adjustable Lotus front anti roll bar, twin oil coolers, leather seats, Accusump engine oil accumulator, Lotus switchable traction control system (LTCS), 5 spoke lightweight forged alloy wheels, Pagid RS14 pads and stainless steel brakes lines.
Gauss:
blueflame:
@ Gauss
The black GFK-Boxes on the right and left side are additional crash-boxes for the 2-11??
Blueflame
I'm not sure. I think they also protect the inner parts (fuse box etc.) from getting damaged by stones.The 2-11 doesn't have wheel arches.
No, I mean the two L+R boxes on the Elise Doors-Position...
Could be two extra crash-boxes, because of the missing side-protection inside the missing doors.
Blueflame