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

The only road-legal Lotus Elise GT1 ever built

Cut into white vinyl, stuck across the top of a windscreen, and taken 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.

It is a heavily modified Elise S1 aluminium tub under a carbon and Kevlar body 2,070 mm across the arches, with 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 parked against a paddock barrier, seen from the front three-quarter. — 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. — 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, and the address stopped answering at about the same time. For more than a decade there has been nothing here at all.

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

Something is being built

The address is answering again. That is as much as there is to say about it today.

What comes next starts where the GT1 started: an Elise S1, taken apart properly and put back together for the road. Not a tribute, not a replica, and not in a hurry.

If you were around the first time — if you saw the car, ran it, photographed it, or have something of it in a drawer — write. And if you simply want to know what is coming, write anyway. You will hear it before anyone else does.

info@xtremeteam.co.uk