Europa Upgrade Performance

[dbroughton]

I see a lot of people claiming 0-60 in 4.9 secs for the 225 upgrade but I have never actually seen a road test for the upgraded and now pretty much standard car.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a test. To be honest I am more interested in how much difference the upgrade has made to the performance through the gears and how it picks up speed at motorway speeds

[bogie]

I think its just wishful thinking, and everyone always likes to crack the magical 5secs to 60

although with 225bhp and what 950kg ish? then it should be possible in ideal conditions

besides, if you had a Europa then the first stop must be with Thorney Motorsport for a proper upgrade to 280bhp

[dbroughton]

I just turned 40 and my max Power days are over.

Driving my Esprit after a few years away and I find that my loud sports exhaust I lovingly installed now simply annoys me. Most mods beyond fixing some basic design flaws just make a car less drivable on a day to day basis. I just want a cool, quick car with a decent factory warranty hence my interest in the lotus upgrade.

[C43]

dbroughton

I used to have an Esprit S4 and am the wrong side of 40 and the Europa seems to fit the bill of an Esprit replacement which goes well and looks good. As an added bonus so far it has not cost me £500 a month to run (touch wood) which the Esprit always did.
compared with the Esprit it is more difficult to get into, not a problem if you are fairly fit, and the cabin in smaller basically cause you don’t have that lovely arm rest on the left hand side...
Performance low down seems similar to the S4. At truly high speed on the motorway the Europa wont live with a quick Esprit but to tell the truth I am not so happy to go that fast nowadays given how tight the police have got.
I have driven a car from Thorney and the exhaust is not too bad but I just don't need the extra power (at the moment)!

C43

[Movano]

dbroughton said:

I see a lot of people claiming 0-60 in 4.9 secs for the 225 upgrade but I have never actually seen a road test for the upgraded and now pretty much standard car.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a test. To be honest I am more interested in how much difference the upgrade has made to the performance through the gears and how it picks up speed at motorway speeds

Autocar's "First Drive" article on the Luxury Touring-equipped Europa mentioned a "claimed" 0-62 mph time of 4.9s - I suspect this article may be the source of all the claims you've seen. But as you mention, there are no actual road test figures to back it up


http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/FirstDrives/Lo...

Movano

(expecting his 225 Europa in a week or two )

[peter450]

Seeing a vx220 with 197 odd hp and 950 kg odd did it in under 5 then i dare say a car with very similar underpinnings and uprated 220 hp engine will certainly match that

[Phil-CH]

Don't have any numbers for the "upgraded" Europa-S, but the standard car has been tested by two magazines in Germany so far:

Auto Motor & Sport:
Weight: 1002kg
0-62mph: 6.3s
0-100mph: 14.8s

The test article is online (German!):
http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/tests/einzeltes...

Quoted for convinience:
60 - 100 km/h (5. Gear) 6.9s
60 - 100 km/h (5. Gear) 7.0s
80 - 120 km/h (5. Gear) 9.0s

Sport auto Magazine also tested it (11/2006):
Weight: 996kg
0-62mph: 5.8s
0-100mph: 13.8s

As mentioned, these are for the standard 200hp car, not the uprgaded one, but should give you a fair idea and at least, these are actually messured times. I don't see 25bhp more power making up for 0.5 to 1.0 second, but from what I hear, the upgrade gives it a better torque curve and pulls better higher in the rev range. The Europa also feels very quick - thanks to the Turbo engine. It's also a lot cheaper to mod than any Elise or Exige.

Cheers Phil

[Twit]

The difference between a 200 and 225 simply in terms of feel is massive, the 225 feels much much faster. I think it is more to do with the mid range which on the 225 is massive. It is a pretty rapid car in 225 format, as the driver of a 111S found out the other week...

[jerrytlr]

People with the 225 upgrade - have any of you had insurance problems? I enquired about getting it done to my standard Europa at the local Lotus dealer and they said the upgrade was, according to Lotus, 'not for road use'. I'm keen to get it done but don't want loads of insurance hassles.....

Any help much appreciated!

Also FYI - I recently enquired with Thorney re their upgrade and they are now recommending that customers get the Lotus upgrade done first, and then (maybe) have Thorney fit the Milltek etc. if they want to go to stage 2.

Final comment - I just came back from Le Mans in my friend's Series 1 111S (standard apart from sports exhaust), and I would say the performance is pretty similar between the two cars, although the nature of the delivery is quite different. The Europa would probably pull away quite quickly above 100 but below that I think they are quite evenly matched... this is all based on purely subjective impressions though, we have not compared the cars back to back (hmmm now there's an idea!)




Cheers

Jerry

[Twit]

Insurance - I havent had any probs with mine, though to be honest I can't remember what I told them!!! I cant see it being a huge issue either way as its all about the map, not bolt on gadgets, so I doubt any inspector etc would know the work had taken place. Its also a factory fit, I know I did say that and my insurance never queried it.

Interesting about Thorney - I emailed them ages ago about the exhaust and I have heard nothing, apparently in conjunction with the 225 its really good as it sorts the breathing and helps smooth out the power delivery. Even with the 225, there is still a bit of a step in the delivery but it seems to be getting less and you can easily drive round it.

As for matching with a 111, I pulled away without trying, but as you say you never really know how hard someone is trying! He did seem to be as I overtook...

[stringthing]

dbroughton said:

I just turned 40 and my max Power days are over.

42 loud and proud. Hurricane and 2bular. Oh yer !

[Movano]

jerrytlr said:

People with the 225 upgrade - have any of you had insurance problems? I enquired about getting it done to my standard Europa at the local Lotus dealer and they said the upgrade was, according to Lotus, 'not for road use'. I'm keen to get it done but don't want loads of insurance hassles.....

Jerry,

I will be trying to arrange insurance for my Europa in the next day or two. Based upon my conversations with the supplying dealer and the snippets of e-mail correspondence between dealer and Lotus that I've seen, I'm going to describe the upgrade to insurers as a "manufacturer-supplied & approved, dealer-fitted ECU upgrade" (or something like that!)

Movano.

[GravelBen]

IIRC the German mags all test acceleration 2-up with either a half tank or full tank of fuel, which can make quite a difference. No doubt the US mags could get it under 5s as they tend to test 1-up on a high-grip drag strip.

[Movano]

Movano said:

jerrytlr said:

People with the 225 upgrade - have any of you had insurance problems? I enquired about getting it done to my standard Europa at the local Lotus dealer and they said the upgrade was, according to Lotus, 'not for road use'. I'm keen to get it done but don't want loads of insurance hassles.....

Jerry,

I will be trying to arrange insurance for my Europa in the next day or two. Based upon my conversations with the supplying dealer and the snippets of e-mail correspondence between dealer and Lotus that I've seen, I'm going to describe the upgrade to insurers as a "manufacturer-supplied & approved, dealer-fitted ECU upgrade" (or something like that!)

Movano.

To report back on insurance on an upgraded car - for specialists such as AON and CCI, the upgrade made no difference. Unfortunately, for my circumstances, their quotes for a regular 200PS Europa were nowhere near being competitive.

I had some amazingly low quotes for a std Europa from a few big names, e.g. Admiral & e-sure. But as they couldn't find any trace of the 225 model being a standard car from Lotus, they imposed quite substantial (~50%) loadings for the upgrade, but were still cheapest for me.

Movano.

[bogie]

where is it noted anywhere that the car has a 225 upgrade? is it on the V5? in the manual? on the car anywhere?

if not, then I wouldnt bother telling anyone you actually have a car with it !

if you have an accident and the car is in a bad way, then how on earth could an insurance engineer tell? ...do you think they download the map and compare parameters with an original Lotus map they have on record....LOL...that will be the day !

[Movano]

bogie said:

if you have an accident and the car is in a bad way, then how on earth could an insurance engineer tell?

Agreed - if the car was in a bad way. But if the damage was minor, they would of course be able to tell by the sub 5 0-60 times

... or sub 6, if the insurance engineer was German ...

Edited by Movano on Sunday 22 June 15:25

[bogie]

Movano said:

bogie said:

if you have an accident and the car is in a bad way, then how on earth could an insurance engineer tell?

Agreed - if the car was in a bad way. But if the damage was minor, they would of course be able to tell by the sub 5 0-60 times

... or sub 6, if the insurance engineer was German ...

Edited by Movano on Sunday 22 June 15:25

LOL ...like they even bother to drive the cars ! ...last 2x its happened to me, they just come out and have a good look around it, and yes, all my mods were declared in detail to them...I just dont get the worrying about a remap, as I doubt that local Lotus technians even have the tools to tell, let alone anyone else.

[dbroughton]

Dont want to sound like some eco-geek but I did try and find out if the CO2 figures changed for the upgrade. I did not want to go into that top band (living in west london where even my parking is based on emissions!)

I did email lotus but they never came back. I suspect that one of the reasons the original car was pegged at 197bhp was to get into band F.

[jazzyjeff]

dbroughton said:

Dont want to sound like some eco-geek but I did try and find out if the CO2 figures changed for the upgrade. I did not want to go into that top band (living in west london where even my parking is based on emissions!)

I did email lotus but they never came back. I suspect that one of the reasons the original car was pegged at 197bhp was to get into band F.

Lotus not bothering to respond to your email sounds like par for the course!

I thought it was introduced with 197bhp initially due to problems with mapping the Bosch EMS?

JJ

[carryondentist]

Or that they did not want it to have more power than the Exige range.