Lotus Elise Cup 250 | PH Auction Block

Need something truly worthy of a PH track day? Step this way...

By Matt Bird / Monday, 2 March 2026 / Loading comments

You may have seen the news last week of a special edition Lotus Emira created for (and by) the Australian market. It’s called the Bathurst, and as befits every special edition that’s been called Bathurst over the years - from Mazda RX-7 to Vauxhall VXR8 - it sounds absolutely brilliant. While the Emira has always been a lovely Lotus, it has always felt fairly familiar as well. A new model, using the AMG four-cylinder turbo and with 500hp, would surely offer up a very different Emira experience. A shame that only 15 Aussie customers will get to experience it.

Will such a thing happen here? You’d have to hope so, given our fondness for a special edition Lotus and the abundance of great race tracks to name it after, but we also have stricter emissions laws. Probably we won’t get a 500hp Emira for the same reason that we don’t get a 400hp Ford Ranger Raptor from the factory. And that’s before even considering the cost: the fairly new Turbo SE, with 400hp, is already £90,000. Would customers really be willing to pay six figures for a four-cylinder Lotus?

For now, then, we’re going to concern ourselves with the old Lotus four-cylinder sports cars. And they really don’t come much more special than the Elise Cup 250. If PH is going to auction what we voted to be the very best car since 1998, then it’s damn well going to be a great one. While there was a Cup 260 that would sit above it, they’re vanishingly rare; the Cup 250 was the pinnacle for the Elise as a road-going track car. So it was spectacular, of course.

While Jean-Marc Gales’ tenure at Hethel became characterised by about as many special editions as he enjoyed days in the job, the Cup 250 was one of the more significant ones. Because instead of just incremental improvements and another new colour, the 250 really moved things on from the 220 it replaced, with the most downforce of any road-legal Elise alongside the power bump. With another 20kg taken out for good measure. All of which made for an Elise as fast around Hethel as a V6 Exige. So very much not just another spec derivative.

While bold plans were afoot to make 200 a year, Lotus never even sold that many Cup 250s here in total. So as well as being an exceptionally fast Elise, it’s an exceptionally rare one as well. This 2019, Gulf Orange example is a stunner, with just 16,000 miles recorded and plenty to be encouraged by in the history: the right amount of services, like new rear tyres, paint protection film, plus a hardtop and touchscreen infotainment to make longer journeys a bit easier.

Whether that’s to a favourite road or circuit, they’re absolutely the sort of journeys that should be undertaken in an Elise Cup 250. Because its genius was in retaining a lot of the Elise delicacy and finesse while also noticeably ramping up the track ability. It was a wonderful sports car for the road and for the track, without one hugely compromising the other. The ideal thing, basically, for PistonHeads track days, the inaugural season of which kicks off this week. We look forward to seeing the Lotus in attendance later in the summer…

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