It’s doubtful we will ever see the likes of the Lotus 340R and Renault Sport Spider again – at least, not from their modern-day parent companies. Each was a courageous step into the unknown, led by a desire to create a pure and unadulterated driving experience unfettered by fripperies such as roofs, heaters and sound-deadening. While four years separated their debuts, they remain two of a kind, which is why they bear comparison today. But why and how they were conceived reveals two very different tales.
Few sports cars have created quite such a groundswell of positivity as the original Lotus Elise. At its launch in 1996 it wowed with its extruded-aluminium chassis, rigidity, low weight and sub-£20k price. But it was powered by a relatively humble four-cylinder Rover K-series engine with a mere 118bhp, so there was scope to further exploit its chassis by turning up the wick. Sport 135 and 160 road models followed, but by 1998 something far more extreme was in the pipeline. A sort of super-Elise – a derivative shorn of any vestige of practicality to starve it of yet more kilos, with its engine ramped up to 11.