The Lotus Elise- wow
By David Fisher. Filed in life |Tags: Uncategorized
While I like to think of myself fully on top of technology and such, when it comes to cars I am anything but. I probably know more about cars than the average person but by no means am I a mechanic or automotive nut. Half the time just the thought of burning fossil fuels to get around turns my stomach.
However, when I was in North Carolina around Christmas, I went with my friends Rich and Ken to (among other things) test some cars. I’m not 100% sure why we were doing this, but it was fun. Ken actually needs a new car since he blew up his Prelude pretty badly, but I still don’t think he was intending to buy that day. First we went to check out some new Audis. Ken test drove a new Audi A3. He seemed to like it and was raving about some new super-automatic transmission. I could care less. Rich and I walked over to the more tasteful car and Ken tried out a Porsche Cayman S. Nifty little car. Apparently Rich scared the salesman when he was pushing the car a bit. I having no license tested neither. I do rather like Porsches, but for me it’s either a 911 Targa 4s, or a late 1970’s 911SC when it comes to daily driving cars.
Here’s where it gets good. We go to a few other places and then end up to the Lotus dealer. The main two cars they have are the Lotus Elise and the Lotus Exige. Each of the cars are very similar, and basically they are sweet and simple cars. The operate on handling, simplicity and lightness. Rich took one for a test drive. Ken could barely get in and out of the car. Oh, did I mention that they make your Z3 or Miata look large? They are tiny. They lack anything that most people would call ‘features’, but have the most important feature of all- speed. 
I pretty much immediately fell in love with the car. I went for a test drive myself. Lacking a license, I had the salesman drive and wow he knows how to drive. Apparently he does this part time and races professional part time. We were ripping down the roads and he was showing me all sorts of neat tricks in a car. Between myself driving, Ken, Rich and Taylor I thought I’d had a good time in a car before but never like this.
The points I absolutely love about the car are:
- It’s tiny. It fits me.
- It looks dead sexy in my eyes. It’s not screaming, “I’m a racecar!” or “I’m trying to compensate” but it looks slick.
- It’s fast. Tops out around 145, but it gets there in a serious way. The Exige S can do 0-60 in 2.9. The Elise in 4.1. Compare that to most cars at 7-11 seconds.
- It’s actually fairly fuel efficient, due to it’s aerodynamics, weight and design.
- It’s a car that forces you to actually drive it. No power steering. Manual transmission. Mid/Rear engine.
- It has no frills to break
- Maintenance is dead simple.
- And it’s cheap as far as cars go. It’s around $40,000 to take one new off the lot. Seems like a deal to me
The reasons I’m not getting one right now are that I’m in Boston, so I don’t need one and there is nowhere to park it or drive it like it should be. I’d have to have at least a parking garage if I had one of these. $40,000 still isn’t “cheap” as far as cars go, but of course there are used ones and they hold up well. It’s a cheap and simple engine to fix, replace, and modify if needed. Almost nothing on the car to break. This is probably the best value on the road period.
Lotus is working on some cars that run on Bio-Ethanol too! Plus, in 2008 you can purchase finally the Tesla, which is basically a 100% electric (no hybridness) supercar built on the Elise frame. They start however at 100K.