Lotus pick-up

With Lotus Engineering being involved in all sorts of weird and wonderful projects the news that they were working on a pick-up project wasn't really a surprise. Until, that is, we saw the press release here. Had Lotus been working on tuning the suspension or improving the refinement of another manufacturer's pick-up we'd have thought nothing of it, but the jokers at Hethel tried to convince us that its latest 'light commercial' was based on the Elise.

As flexible as the Elise's clever extruded aluminium platform is a pick-up Elise is one step too far even for the engineering wizards at Lotus. The release was littered with clues as to the joke, Lotus claiming a 5kg payload and 10kg towing ability, a pull-start supercharged diesel engine, four-wheel drive and a 0-60mph time of less than three seconds for its sports car based commercial machine. Thing is, joking aside, we rather liked the look of the mocked up photo that came with it...

Tuesday April 1