The top of a black Lotus Elise GT1 windscreen, carrying www.xtremeteam.co.uk in white cut vinyl.

P498 PPW is the only road-legal Lotus Elise GT1 ever built

Somebody cut that address into white vinyl, stuck it across the top of a windscreen, and took the car to race meetings for years.

One road car

In 1997 Lotus built eight Elise GT1s at Hethel. Seven went racing in the FIA GT Championship and finished the season without a point; the one entered at Le Mans retired after 121 laps. The eighth car was built because the regulations of the day said a GT1 racer had to have a road-going twin, and it is the only one there has ever been.

That car is P498 PPW: a heavily modified Elise S1 aluminium tub, a carbon and Kevlar body 2,070 mm across the arches, and the 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged Type 918 V8 from the Esprit sitting behind the seats. It was blue once. It has been black for a long time.

The Lotus Elise GT1 road car P498 PPW parked against a paddock barrier, seen from the front three-quarter. — P498 PPW in the paddock, still wearing the address.

The Lotus Elise GT1 at a race circuit, rear wing up, www.xtremeteam.co.uk across the windscreen and the plate P498 PPW on the nose. — At a meeting, on the blue carpet, among the transporters. Photographs by Ilya Holt for Supercars.net.

The same car parked on the blue paddock carpet at a race meeting, hospitality marquees and Michelin boards behind it. — At a meeting, on the blue carpet, among the transporters. Photographs by Ilya Holt for Supercars.net.

Then it went quiet

The car stopped turning up in public somewhere after 2010. The address stopped answering at about the same time, and eventually came off the register altogether. Between those two facts sits a decade in which almost nobody has said publicly where the only road-legal Elise GT1 actually is.

The same Lotus Elise GT1 on a circuit road, rear wing raised, www.xtremeteam.co.uk legible across the windscreen.

Write to us

The address is on the register again, and this page is the whole reason why. We are not the people who cut that sticker for the glass. We are looking for them, and for the car.

If you saw it, ran it, photographed it, worked on it, sold it, or simply know where it sits today — tell us. A paddock photograph, a name, a rumour, a magazine clipping. Any of it is worth having.

info@xtremeteam.co.uk