I'm pretty sure this is not the most appropriate kind of thread for this forum, but I have no idea where else I can ask about it.

Ok, here's what bothers me about this car:

(photo from en.wikipedia.org)
This is the car that now poses as the road car. It seems to be nearly identical to Elise GT1 race cars, except for the foglights and light reflectors on the rear. Oh, and the 350hp V8, seemingly taken from Esprit V8 (as both cars use Type 918 twin-turbo V8, but ones made for Esprit V8 are 350hp units, while the ones made for Esprit GT1 and lise GT1 are 550hp). Quick research has shown that the car is (or at least was) private, it belonged (or still belongs, I didn't confirm that yet) to Ed Morris's XtremeTeam.
However, I suspect that this car has originated as a race car and was later converted into a road car for two reasons:
1) It's private. I see no reason why Lotus would sell their only homologation special car.
2) There was a different Elise GT1 road car, which had less extensive aero (it lacked rear wing and roof scoop and had a different front end) and a fancier trim (such as interior from S1 Elise and properly retractable side windows).
The problem with the "other" Elise GT1 road car is that it, well, hasn't really been shot by anyone besides people from Electronic Arts, so shots of that car from Need for Speed 2 seem to be the only proofs of its existence.
(do note how one of these shots features a slightly different Elise GT1, which has a rear wing, a race-spec interior and different mirrors, but still lacked the roof scoop and additional aero on the front - I have no idea if it's anyhow related)

So, well, I'd like to ask if there's anybody who can get in touch with people who are familiar with any of these two cars and find out what happened to the Lotus's homologation car after it was shot by EA and/or reassure the origin of XtremeTeam's car? Lotus has only build ne street-legal Elise GT1, and I sincerely doubt that these two cars are one and the same due to how different they are.

upd: This is a homologation form for Lotus Elise GT1 (where it was dubbed as "Lotus GT1 (Turbo)"): http://historicdb.fia.com/sites/defa..._6_group_g.pdf
I'm pretty sure that this most likely is the car that Lotus showed to EA, but somehow sporting different bodywork. Also note how it is documented to have longitudinally mounted turbocharged Chevrolet LT5 instead of 350hp Lotus Type 918 the current road car uses.

 

The blue car became the current black/carbon car. Lotus originally painted it blue and it had amber indicators with no rear wing either and IMO looked better and the current owner (unless it has changed recently) restored it to its current state.

It was last seen in about 2010/11 but the owner seems to have gone dark with it since.

I don't believe it's ever been performance tested so much like basically any of the 90's GT1 homologation specials you have to take the details with a pinch of salt. I think I read somewhere a long time ago that it originally had 350bhp and was the same engine that you got in Esprit V8's at the time.

There used to be an Elise GT1 website that I think the owner ran himself or at least provided details to and was side by side with the Esprit GT1 website here:

Lotus Esprit GT1

But I can't find any trace of it anymore.

At least one of the race cars has been converted to road spec too, it ran in the yellow/black Franck Muller livery back on Stephane Ratel's Supercar Rally back in 2001. I believe it was a spare tub that got built up and was for sale a few times in a green and yellow livery on sites like ClassicDriver and such in the past ten years or so.

 

Uhh, a blue Elise GT1? Never came across any blue ones; all of them have been pained either dark gray or in race liveries with barely any blue in them.

Where was it?

XtremeTeam's site did feature specs of their Elise GT1 road car, but they didn't say anything in regards of its origin.

This one?


On another note, EVO Magazine's issue #59 (September 2003) did feature a 6 page article on Elise GT1; according to the cover, the car was the one XtremeTeam has owned. I've currently contacted the owner of this issue so he could scan these pages for me - there are no digital versions of this magazine anywhere, and I don't feel like getting a physical one just to read one article once.

upd: there's only one photo of a blue Elise GT1 on the net to my knowledge:

According to its plates, it's the XtremeTeam one. It perfectly matches the XtremeTeam car in anything besides color.

 

Yeah the XtremeTeam car is the only road car. It started off in the blue and is now black/carbon as I said. It's still got the Lotus V8 engine as opposed to the LT1 I think, but now I do believe it has 550bhp rather than the original 350. Again, I'd have to dig into all my old research about it cause I think the last time I looked was around 2010/11.

Lotus started off with their turbo V8 originally (as ran the year before in the Esprit GT1) but because of the rule changes about turbocharged cars (to curb the 911 GT1's performance when it ran riot for the last few races of 1996) they realised it wasn't going to work so some of the cars had the LT1 Chevy engine instead.

I believe there were six race chassis:

Two Franck Mueller cars (yellow and black)



Two Benetton sponsored cars with slightly different front bodywork),



One of them was recently restored last year and ran at the 73rd Goodwood Members meeting. Happy that it's restored but they've put normal front bodywork on it.




One Green and Yellow car ran by a German team called MVR (The same car as the green/yellow car you posted but with sponsors at the time, it ended up in the US and ran at Daytona in 2002)

One white Thai sponsored car.

You can see the four liveries here:

LOTUS ELISE GT1 | Le Mans & Gran Turismo (LMP, GT1, GT2, GT3, GTS) - diecast models 1:43

Though the Franck Mueller cars also ran a bit of Thai sponsorship too at times.

Then the road car, and the spare chassis I mentioned that also became road registered. I believe they're the two in this photo here:



Two chassis were converted into Bitter GT1's, one is currently for sale.



https://racemarket.net/race-cars/rac...acing-car-i373

 

So out of 8 cars, one of which was supposed to be a homologation road car, only 6 raced? I'm surprised that they didn't take all 7 out for racing.

I certainly didn't know that bit, thanks for the info. I always thought that Lotus used LT5s because they could and thought that these were a better choice of an engine (though it wasn't). But that means only Lotus's in-house Frank Muller cars got to race, as they've only put LT5s in their own cars, leaving private teams with Type 918s.

But I'm not that interested in cars that got to race. I'm more interested in the car that Lotus used for homologation and lended to EA for photo and video shots. Even though, after re-reading homologation docks, it could've had Type 918 instead of LT5 like I initially thought (as the engine used is not specified, and the mentioned bits of info on them are similar/matching), but it certainly was different from the rest of Elise GT1s at least because it had a fancier interior from S1 Elise and properly retractable side windows... tossing these out from a car that was never supposed to race just plain doesn't make sense.
There's also an article on Goodwood's site that states that Elise GT1 road car "never left Lotus’ ownership": https://www.goodwood.com/grrc/race/h...ight-not-know/
XtremeTeam, on the other hand, is obviously private, so if what that article says is true, Ed Morris could never own the road car, which means he either converted a race car to make it street legal or used a spare chassis you've mentioned.

 

During so many years, I was searching for solutions that makes sense about the history of this awesome car since it is one of my all time favourite cars (and especially the exact first prototype featured on Need for Speed II). Here are all the answers which I have found:

The Lotus GT1 shown in Need for Speed II was the exact first prototype version of the car.

It was made in 1996 (and not 1997) and was officially called 'LOTUS GT1 (TURBO)' (and not 'LOTUS ELISE GT1' as shown in other racing games).

It originally had the regular Elise interior and side mirrors, as well as fully openable windows, an optional rear wing and no roof scope. It's engine was directly taken from the Esprit V8.

The license plate shown in the game's pictures is edited (and mirrored). The original pictures had 'P498 PPW' and were changed as watermarks since the car was very rare to find back in 1997. You can still find the original pictures with 'P498 PPW' license plate on the showcase video since they forgot to change them there.



And yes, the one you see with the XtremeTeam logo is indeed the one featured on Need for Speed II.. but was heavily upgraded/changed on every side.

Personally, I love the original prototype with the regular Elise interior and no rear wing/roof scope more than the final version.

 

dailysportscar.com

Might find this interesting.