Speedsters are a lot of fun, even without speed limits.
Zero doors, no roof and a weight of almost nothing make it extremely scary to push a Lotus 3-Eleven past its maximum speed limit. Yet, AutoTopNL was not unaffected by these facts and tested one today.
The Lotus 3-Eleven was introduced in 2015. It comes in two versions: one for racing and one for road use. Although the former is more powerful, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the road-legal model was less powerful. 311 copies of the original 3-Eleven were produced. The Lotus 3-Eleven 311 was introduced in 2018.
One of the 311 was the 3-Eleven that ran the fastest speed on the German Autobahn’s unrestricted sections. The engine is a 3.5-liter Toyota 2GRFE V6 motor, coupled to an Edelbrock Roots supercharger. The total output is rated at 306 horsepower (306 kilowatts) while the road-legal version produces 302 pound-feet (411 Newton-meters) of torque. It weighs in at 2,039 pounds (952 kilograms).
The track-only version produces 460 horsepower (343 kW), and 387 lbft (525 Nm) after some modifications, as well as weight reductions necessary to make this speedster even more powerful. The more powerful and road-legal Lotus 3-Eleven produces 430 horsepower (321 kW), hence its name.
According to the test, the speed limit for road-legal 3-Eleven was 180 miles per hour (290 km per hour). The driver was unable to achieve that speed, as you can see from the video. The driver was able to reach 168 mph (270 km/h) but it wasn’t a bad effort considering he had wind in his face. It was scary, but it was fun.