But improving an icon is hard work.
Packaging is one way.
Lowering the bonnet and reducing the waistline accentuates the width at the rear. Also, having larger diameter wheels at the rear than those at the front helps with this effect. There is an essential purity to the new design that implies quick, certain, spirit-marker strokes and no detailed fiddling. I would be surprised if they weren t halfway there by teatime on the very first day. There is no doubt that slipping behind the wheel of the Elise, or any other Lotus, is like being admitted to a select club.