To the uninitiated, the Lotus Exige S1 looks like an early Elise with a hardtop and a set of spoilers, and some Elise owners ...

The original Lotus ... parts are impossible to find in the U.S. The B18C, meanwhile, is Honda-reliable and with its 8400-rpm redline and VTEC cylinder head, a perfect match for the lightweight Elise.

Giving chase in my mostly standard S1 Elise I fumbled into ... a large sum of money in new parts… Other sports cars have come and gone, but the brilliance of Lotus’s part-aluminium, part ...