Here's a rare chance to bag the most uncompromising Elise ever to leave the Hethel factory

We have something very rare, and very special for our latest Classifieds’ Car Of The Day: a Lotus Elise 340R. Never heard of it? That’s pretty forgivable, given that Lotus made just 340 (see what they did there?) back in 2000.

Based on the Elise, this road-legal nutter got a custom body which dispensed with the roof and doors. This brought the kerb weight down to just 701kg. The 1.8-litre Rover K-Series four-pot used by Lotus at the time was fettled to churn out 177bhp.

With that incredibly low weight, the 340R will blast from 0-60mph in just 4.4 seconds, and top out at 130mph. Tempted? You’ll need a fair bit of dough, unfortunately.

This one we’ve found is up for £27,000, which isn’t hugely far off the original £35,000 list price. It’s only done 12,800 miles, however, and does have £6000-worth of carbonfibre upgrades. If you’re in the market for something like a KTM X-Bow or Ariel Atom, this 340R is well worth a look.