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Carbon Fiber Lotus Elise Takes Six Months to Build

There are a lot of crazy people out there. Some of them like to play with dolls even if they're in their thirties, while others have long conversations with imaginary friends. Gladly, there's an even more infrequently occurring but less likely to cause any harm type of crazy individuals in the world. Those who are crazy about cars.

Hong Kong resident Jimmy Wong is one of those people. The guy commissioned his 2002 Lotus Elise Type 72 JP to be transformed from a really lightweight track killer to a “Luke, I am your father!” type of really lightweight track killer. Almost every piece of metal on the car except the aluminium chassis was replaced with a carbon fiber twin, and this includes parts in the interior also.

Although carbonfibergear.com somewhat informs us that Wong's plan was to get rid of as much extra weight as possible with the carbon(izing) project, the car only lost 30-40 kg (70-90 lbs) from its original butterfly weight.

It could have probably saved the same amount of weight just by getting rid of the sound insulation, the stereo system and all the carpeting, and at the same time replacing all the windows with plexiglass. Whatever the reasons for the carbon fiber transformation, the result is amazingly ugly in a very beautiful, dark way.

All the work was custom made by TW Auto Limited, a tuning specialist based in Hong Kong, and the project lasted around six months from start to finish. Apart from all the carbon fiber in and around it, the car also got a KW suspension, JP Racing wheels, a sportier air filter with a larger intake and a Lotus Racing stage 2 exhaust, which is probably illegal in some countries.

Other than that, the Elise is free of any type of kitschy or performance modifications. The coolest part about it is that the car is spec'd or rated in weight differential, not in horsepower. For example, the ratio between how many kg/lbs are shaved versus how many hp are won by using the Lotus Racing exhaust is more important than how much power it has.
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About the author: Alex Oagana
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Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project.
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