Top Gear’s Top 9: the lightweights edition

Ever since the Series 1 Elise tipped the scales at a paltry 725kg, Lotus has been showing the world that it’s possible to perfect the roadster recipe. Think of it like Mary Berry’s famous Victoria Sponge, but in this case, Mary has suddenly decided to focus on lightweight, mid-engined, manual gearboxed sports cars. Crikey, Lockdown 3.0 is getting to us…

Anyway, production of the Elise will finally come to an end later this year, and to celebrate Lotus has built something called the Elise Sport 240 Final Edition. Thanks to modern safety requirements and emissions regs it now weighs 930kg, but that still gives it the right to walk up to Porsche Boxster owners and ask them why their car weighs so damned much.

Read our Final Edition Elise review by clicking these blue words.

Obvious, right? The Seven clearly fits the bill here because it was designed by Colin Chapman and launched as the Lotus Seven way back in 1957. When those Norfolk folk ended production in the early 1970s, Caterham bought the rights and has been building its own variants ever since. 

Maximum lightness – and general craziness – points go to 2008’s Superlight R500.

The late 1990s/early 2000s hatchback market doesn’t exactly scream ‘lightweight special’. This is a time when the podgy Mk4 Golf GTI arrived sporting a 1,200kg+ kerb weight, remember?

Still, there is one imponderous imposter that makes it onto our list of favourites. The Audi A2’s space frame-like aluminium construction meant it was lighter – and considerably more expensive – than rivals. A kerb weight of less than 900kg and that aerodynamic shape meant it was extremely economical, and yet somehow very cool.

Back to TG business as usual. The Nomad gets in ahead of its ‘sensible’ sibling the Ariel Atom, simply because it’s like nothing else out there. 

An off-road special with the wheel travel of a WRC car and Baja influence everywhere, it weighs around 650kg before you equip it with the obligatory light bar, winch and whip aerial. And even then it’ll only make a 725kg hole in whatever mud/sand/snow you throw it at.

Want more (okay, a lot more) creature comforts but still fancy something that hasn’t indulged in too many pies? At around 1,100kg, the A110 is roughly 300kg lighter than the Audi TT or Porsche Cayman. 

There’s no fad diets in sight, though. Getting to that target weight involved some seriously nerdy engineering. For example, the electric parking brake is integrated into the primary rear brake and so doesn’t require an extra caliper, saving a whole 2.5kg. Nice. 

How else to save weight? How about lopping off a wheel and fitting a 115bhp S&S twin-cylinder motorbike engine to what looks like a bathtub dressed as a Spitfire? That’s essentially what Morgan did with the 3-Wheeler, and it is absolutely fantastic. 

We might be cheating here, because technically the T50 hasn’t arrived yet. But listen to its creator Gordon Murray talk about how he made a naturally aspirated V12-engined hypercar weigh less than a tonne, then come back and tell us it isn’t in your very own Top 9.

Shout out to one of Gordon’s previous projects here too – the 381kg, two-seat Light Car Company Rocket. The lightest production car ever made.

Eagle’s Lightweight GT pays homage to Jaguar’s own Lightweight E-Type race cars of the early 1960s. The difference – apart from the Eagle’s impossibly delightful interior – is that these glorious modern-day restomods use materials such as magnesium, Inconel, carbon fibre and titanium to reach a kerb weight of 1,017kg.

Not the lightest thing on this list, but unquestionably the best-looking and sounding. 

Another with Lightweight in its name, and another we just couldn’t avoid for this collection. For many, the 2.7 RS is the performance 911 – and there’ve been a fair few of those since this thing was first shown to the public at the 1972 Paris Motor Show.

Built to satisfy Group 4 homologation regs, the 2.7 RS in its Lightweight form eschewed rear seats, sound deadening and even carpets to reach its circa 900kg kerb weight. It used an enlarged 2.7-litre flat-six making 210bhp, and there was even thinner gauge steel for the wings, doors and roof panel as well as thinner, lighter glass specially made by Belgian company Glaverbel. What a thing.

Image: RM Sotheby’s