Lotus Introduces Roger Becker Elise and Exige

While Lotus may be moving into a new era with vehicles like the Evora, it still remains very much true to its original roots. And that is producing fun and extremely lightweight performance vehicles. The Elise is the vehicle that revived the brand over the past decade.

One of the fixtures of the company besides the original founder Colin Chapman has been Roger Becker, who was with Lotus for 44 years. To commemorate that, the company is introducing special editions of the Elise and Exige named after him.

For 2010, supercharged Elise and Exige models will no longer be available in the European market. The engine they use, a 1.8-liter Toyota four-cylinder unit, no longer meets stricter new Euro 5 emissions standards.

These standards are forcing Lotus to change the engines. As such, the last of the 1.8-liter cars will be dubbed the Elise SC RGB and Exige S RGB Editions and they will be sold in European markets only. The Elise models has a 217 horsepower engine while the Exige model makes 257 horsepower.

Each car is available with your choice of four colors - white, yellow, black and grey, along with black forged alloy wheels. Roger Becker had this to say about the special edition models:

"I am honoured that Lotus has named these two special editions after me, especially as it allows me to offer the customer my favourite specifications. The past 44 years have been an incredible journey and I'm looking forward to watching Lotus progress in the future, I have no doubt that the company will continue to go from strength to strength."

The RGB edition cars have Becker's signature on the B-pillar and a numbered plaque.