Supercharged Performance
The Lotus Elise [SC] is the car that Lotus said it couldn't build. When the company introduced the supercharged
Lotus Exige S coupe, it argued that the need for an intercooler and an overhead air scoop made it impossible to introduce the engine in the roofless Elise. The company engineers weren't wrong, but when customers started asking for an artificially aspirated roadster, they decided to engineer a new motor.
The SC uses the same 1.8-liter Toyota 2ZZ-GE engine that's featured in the Exige, but it now features a Roots-type Magnusson M45 supercharger (slightly smaller than the Exige's unit). Though the installation doesn't have an intercooler, the Lotus engineers discovered that careful tuning of the engine's variable valve timing brought the same improvement in output.
As a result the Elise SC produces 217 hp, nearly as much as the Exige's 220-hp rating and usefully more than the 190-hp Elise. Torque, meanwhile, is improved from 134 pound-feet to 157 lb-ft, just 2 less than the Exige engine's output.
