As a Lotus Elise owner based in the UK I thought I'd add a few comments to what you have been discussing. Sorry it's so out of date thread wise.
My particular car, being in the UK is fitted with the Rover engine and is a Lotus tuned engine with 160bhp from the factory and abuot 170bhp now. Doing a quick conversion it's about 1580lbs.
Therefore about 235bhp/ton (metric). There are cars running here in the Uk with about 230bhp N/A and some with 260bhp supercharged. For the 1/4 recently, on a less than grippy strip some standard (120bhp) cars were running 14s and a 230bhp in the low 13s. As you have stated the US Elises have either a Honda engine and can be used on the road, or a Rover engine for track use only. The Rover engine was designed for European regulations not US.
As you have said it is all about the corners. If you have a look on my website you will see some videos taken around the Nuerburgring, while my knowledge of the circuit helps, the Elise is very good around there, but some of the longer straights do make it suffer a bit, as i was only touching about 135mph, as opposed to some of the Porsches doing 160mph. A lap is 13miles, and the video doesn't show a full lap as on public days they close off part of the main straight. However the Elise goes round in about 9mins, and thats me taking it easy as I has to drive back to the UK from Germany in the car. Picture of the car on the ring below.
Having driven a large number of different vehicles including some US 'muscle' I personally prefer the nimbleness of the Lotus. Most US cars in my experience are not as well sorted suspension wise as European cars, not being contriversial, it's just you don't have the same type of roads we do, so manufacturers don't design for it.
On the subject of tyres, the Yokohame A038 is the standard tyre on the Lotus 340R (Basically a stripped out Elise with a new body shell) this weighs about 1530lbs.
I don't drop in very often but if there are any questions about the car ask away.
Oh yeah, It's only in the last few months on the new model that A/C is available on the Elise, not that suited to the US
My site is
http://www.elise-s160.co.uk