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Lotus Elise meets the girl it was named after

Granddaughter of former chairman reunites with first-gen sports car 22 years on.


The Lotus Elise has been around for some 22 years, and this week the lightweight sports car reunited with the girl that inspired its name – Elisa Artioli.

Her grandfather is former chairman of Lotus, Romano Artioli, who was overseeing the British sports car manufacturer when the Elise was launched in 1995.

Elisa inspired the sports car's name, and was even present at the launch with the first production line-built example 22 years ago (below) which is the same car she's pictured with today.

During her visit to the Lotus headquarters, Elisa also drove her first-ever laps around the company's Hethel test track, piloting an Exige Sport 410 and Evora GT410.

The original 'Series 1' Lotus Elise was powered by a 1.8-litre naturally-aspirated four-cylinder petrol engine sourced from Rover, making just 88kW of power. Despite it's rather meek output, the Elise only weighed 725kg, making for a 0-100 claim of 5.8 seconds.

Click through to the galleries section for more images

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