10/07/04 Finally, the big day - picked up the new Elise at Park Place in Seattle. There have been a lot of twists and turns getting to this point (for one, until today I did not have a single thing in writing - the entire order was handled verbally on the phone with Lotus USA). The US Lotus group is really to be commended for all their hard work and for really coming through, even though at times it looked unlikely at best. So my thanks to all involved and Clyde in particular. The car is here, exactly as ordered, even if there were a few snags and surprises along the way. Also, the people at Park Place were a pleasure to deal with. As of a couple of days ago I was expecting to wait at least three more weeks for the car. Then Monday I get an e-mail from Park Place - 'your car is here, you can pick it up tomorrow'. What the.... Uh, OK! A bit of a mad scramble to get all the arrangements taken care of on my end (I don't have that kind of cash just laying around), then I booked an Amtrak ticket to Seattle and this morning walked down to the station for the trip North. The view out of the window as I walked out was a bit eerie, with the fog rolling in...

The fact that I'm getting there by train gave the whole trip a bit of a European flair, as train travel is not commonly practiced in this country. But the experience went smoothly, starting out in Portland fog, cruising for some 3 hours along the route of varying scenic value and arriving to a high overcast in Seattle where a Park Place representative picked me up at the station.

Then, finally, to meet the car. Friends dropped by the dealer the night before and had sent me some pictures but I just had to wait for my own :)

Formalities were taken care of pretty efficiently and in less than an hour I was on my way home. After some debate with myself I elected to just take a direct route on I5 and save backroads for when I'm a bit more familiar with the car. First impressions - the brake pedal is way too light. They went to power-assisted brakes for the US car and I think it was a mistake. It almost feels like the gas pedal has more resistance than the brake and heel-and-toe is difficult or impossible. Oh well. The engine is flexible although it doesn't have much punch down low. Similar to the 190 - hopefully once past the break-in when I'm able to go above 5K RPM it will deliver the 190's performance up top. The exhaust has a very pleasant, deep growl to it - MUCH better than any K-series I've driven. The shifter is reasonably precise, about half-way between how the 190 felt before and after I upgraded the linkage in it. Towards the end of the trip, with 200 miles on the clock, the engine seemed to get a bit more power. Or perhaps I'm just getting used to it. Either way, it's quite fun. I do the whole trip with the top off and there is a bit of a wind buffet at around 5K RPM in 6th :) I escape a couple police encounters, including one where I spot the officer just as he's taking aim at me with his laser. Between having good brakes and a black car with no front plate and small headlights, he can't get a fix and I get away with it. Whew. The car is pretty comfortable over long distance, for what it is, and the trip goes faster than expected. The interior is a nice place to be overall. Ventilation seems to work although the air coming through it always seems to be warm regardless of the control setting. I didn't try the AC. On the minus side, the radio is a garish arcade-graphics POS that I really would have loved to have the option to delete. Perhaps I'll have to do it manually. Not that I ever use the radio - I just turned the power on to see what the display looks like. Awful - kinda wish I hadn't done it (serves me right I guess). Blaupunkt used to do classy stuff but no more. Sigh... Anyway, to finish off a trip of 200 highway miles I took a slight detour via my favorite twisty road. The Elise feels very nice and planted in the turns (even more so when I did the same road again later in the day). I think I'm going to enjoy this :) Once home, a few obligatory pictures...

And finally, removing some stuff from the tiny trunk, a humorous moment:

Yes, that's right, a Federally-mandated interior trunk release handle. Keep in mind that the trunk is barely big enough for a duffle bag. But if you were to accidentally lock a gnome in your Elise's trunk he'd be able to escape! No wonder it costs millions to make cars street legal in this country. Again, my hat is off to Lotus. That's a very nice trunk release handle!

10/10/04 Yesterday yanked out the stereo (less likely to attract a break-in and no silly blue light in dash). Also the trunk interior release handle, cute as it was, is now history because it looked like it was a source of a rattle. The 'lis also got its first coat of wax and while I was moving cars around I took a couple of shots with it next to the MINI (click on each picture for larger version).

Then today, my friend stopped by with my 'ex' Elise for a side-by-side comparison. Only took photos today but in the near future the plan is to do a comparo drive on some twisty roads. Obviously I'll post the results. In the meantime, here are some pix (clickable). The new car appears wider due to front fender shape. It also sits nearly two inches higher - something that will get fixed in a little while. Overall impression is that of a larger car even though it isn't.

10/11/04 Went for a nice 50-mile drive on winding country roads at night. First thing I noticed about night driving in the Elise is the weird headlight pattern. It's like two checkmarks, with rainbows up top, aimed relatively high (my driveway slopes down a bit so it's really not as severe as the pictures show but still higher than I'm used to).

The light doesn't go very far and while the illumination is surprisingly good to the sides (perfect for tight narrow roads in the hills) one doesn't get to see too far forward without the use of high beams. The latter just make it comparable to low beams in a normal modern car like the MINI. All the road signs end up rainbow-colored which is weird. Another quirk is that the gauges and the backlit ventilation controls reflect in the rear window and thus feature prominently in the mirror. This is because the rear window is tilted forward and as a result, thankfully, oncoming headlights don't seem to reflect in it but the interior light sources do.

The drive itself was quite interesting too. I ought to figure out how to set up the camera in this car - blasting trhough some curves in it, especially at night, is a revelation. First major adjustment is just how much speed can be carried into the corners, even coming from the MINI which itself is quite impressive by street car standards. I have to keep reminding myself to not use the brakes and just steer. I know the roads which I took pretty well but even in the dark, with dry leaves flying around, the corners which are comfortably entertaining with occasional tire wimper in the MINI at 50 mph I was unwinding at 60 without the Elise even breathing hard. VERY impressive and I'm not easily impressed. Just a few minutes from the city I saw a couple of deer and later a bobcat slinking away from the road. Fourth time I've seen one in the wild - cool. The critters seemed to hear my approach well in advance and posed no problems.

Now for the negatives, which primarily have to do with refinement and build quality. Once the car was thoroughly warmed up I tried running the RPM a bit higher and there is definitely a pronounced 'step' in power delivery at 6500 RPM as the cam profiles shift. Nothing violent but very obvious. That in itself is not much of a problem... Sadly, there is a very loud buzz that resonates somewhere behind the seats with the engine in the 5-6K RPM range. Sounds like loose plastic or wiring harness. It's loud enough to be heard clearly over the engine noise. I'll have to pull off the plastic cover on the firewall and see what I can do to fix this. Another annoyance is an equally loud and even more unpleasant buzz somewhere in the shifter mechanism when accelerating through 6K RPM, especially in 3rd. Even I, knowing pretty much what to expect from an Elise, am rather put off by this. I would imagine that some mid-life-crisis Lexus refugee that just shelled out nearly $50K on a shiny toy would be quite disappointed and upset. Combine this with near-acrobatic entry and exit requirments, spartan accomodations, massive 3/4 rear blind spots and only adequate engine performance in normal around-town mode and I think there will be a lot of trendy people out there heading for the nearest Porsche or BMW dealer in short order. Just as well as far as I'm concerned but Lotus may wish to think about that. I don't mean to sound ungrateful and I definitely appreciate the amount of effort it took to bring this car here in the first place, but Lotus really needs to spend some development effort on making sure the experience of driving the car matches the price tag not only in the twisties (no problem there!) but also getting to them and back. In the meantime, I'll have to see how much of this I can address myself since the dealer is 200 miles away... So the drive has left me exhilarated on one hand and annoyed on the other. Sigh... At least I knew what I was getting into. I worry about those without previous Lotus experience.