Driving the 330bhp, £375,000 carbon-bodied Elise

HPE’s super-lightweight, Honda-powered R500 is a single-seater in drag

“I want to say the R500 is not a scary car to drive,” says Dan Webster, the earnestness in his Brummie tone entirely betrayed by the glint in his eyes. “But it probably will be scary the first time you drive it.”
The deadpan delivery makes me laugh out loud, then quietly look inward. I get that Webster, who races an Elise and is the master engine tuner turned overhaul specialist behind Bromsgrove-based High Performance Engineering, rates his product. I also get that, with a McLaren F1’s power-to-weight ratio and a wheelbase shorter than that of a VW Up, the heartbreakingly expensive R500 is going to have some mischief about it. But genuinely scared? By a little Elise? Be serious. 
What I’m about to discover is that the 330bhp HPE ‘Special Vehicles R500’, with its polycarbonate windows and plumbed-in fire extinguisher, is an S1 Elise in only the loosest sense. True, it stops short of being a silhouette racer, but