NemesisC5

Small but mighty, the open-topped Lotus 3-Eleven sure looks like the world's best go-kart. At least on paper: Weight is under 2,000 pounds, and its supercharged 3.5-liter V6 kicks out 460 hp; 0-60 takes a reported 2.9 seconds. Woo!

Thanks to sport auto magazine test driver Christian Gebhardt, the 3-Eleven now has a record to back up its aggressive posture. With Gebhardt at the wheel, the 3-Eleven lapped Germany's Hockenheimring in 1 minute, 6.2 seconds -- a hair faster than the Porsche 918 Spyder, which managed the feat in 1 minute, 6.3 seconds (we did mean a hair faster). That's also hotter than the Gumpert Apollo (1 minute, 7.2 seconds), the Radical SR3 SL (1 minute, 8.1 seconds) and so on.

The limited-edition 3-Eleven -- 311 will be built, naturally -- is expensive for a Lotus. The sticker works out to roughly $130,000 for the road version and $150,000 for the track-oriented race version, but that's a fraction of the cost of a modern hypercar of any breed. So we're looking at a tremendous value proposition here, provided you have the skill to wield the car.

One thing to note: The Hockenheimring post-2002 is a very different beast than it was before the Hermann Tilke redesign, which eliminated its famous long straights. The tight corners of today's circuit might not give hypercars like the 918 the opportunity to exploit their power advantage, but on the old Hockenheimring, or another longer track (like the famous Nurburgring), the results might have been very different. for the little Lotus.

Of course, we're probably just telling ourselves that because, like the Exige, we can't legally buy the thing here in the States. Oh well.

Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/car-news...#ixzz42yQ5BpWa