dp lotus elise s190

03/29/08 I've been debating whether to even create a separate log for this car or just put it under ETC. The story is a bit convoluted but, like the M5 before it, I won't be keeping this one long. Ultimately though this site is about experiences and I will get to experience this beast, both on the street and on the track so it will have a rightful place in the stable. One of the big motivations is to see how it compares to the Atom and to the two Elise versions that came before it. The engine is now supercharged and power is up to 240. Brakes are upgraded, seats are new, and of course the hardtop styling is different (and to me cooler and more aggressive than the standard Elise). On paper this is the Lotus that I've wanted from the start so I'm quite eager to find out how reality lives up to the promise... The ordering process was pretty straightforward with only about a three month wait and today, finding a break in the unseasonal snowfall, I went and picked it up.

The BRG color is a break in my long-running black car streak. If nothing else it gives more color to the navigation column on the site :) I do like it though. And perhaps too obviously this car's name is now Kermit. I know, I know - not particularly imaginative but that's what I think of when looking at it so that's what it is.

And yes, the gnome escape handle in the trunk is still there! Gotta love bureaucrats.

The drive home was short and the roads wet so I don't really have a lot to say about the car yet, but here are some initial impressions:

- The engine is nice, with the caveat that I haven't taken it over 4500 rpm yet. There seems to be plenty of torque down low and it's smooth and linear. You can actually tool around town in this car and not be aching to get the revs above 6500.

- Visibility out the back is zero. The windshield-mounted rearview mirror is as useful as the interior trunk release handle. Merely a checkmark on some government mole's list of things a car must have, nevermind whether it does anything or not. Backing up is a bit of a trick and it helps to have someone outside to guide you. Once underway the side mirrors are perfectly adequate though.

- Interior is more grown up than even what the '05 Elise I had. Seats are much improved. Overall though the car still feels a bit 'tinny', the gearbox buzzes and every pebble off the road bangs on the aluminum underfloor. Some things haven't changed.

So this is definitely a track toy. I wouldn't want to spend much time in it on the street and I won't, save for the initial break-in miles. In the garage the current stack looks like this:

Time to finally get Bikini trackworthy and run them back to back, with GPS. Should be fun.

04/05/08 Neither the time nor the weather to drive Kermit lately but I did manage to put some 220 miles on it so far. It helps having nice twisty roads nearby so they haven't been boring miles. M's comment after a stint behind the wheel - "the steering feels great, I want a non-power steering car now!". Well, there aren't many 2,000 lb cars left these days and with anything heavier than that you kind of need some assist. Or at least most people do. The driving experience suffers of course but so it goes. Purity of experience is what makes the Exige more appealing and that's a good and needed thing.

In the short time I've had Kermit the inside passenger door handle has stopped working so the only way to open the right door is from the outside. This makes me look like much more of gentleman than I really am when I have passengers. The joke goes that when a man opens the car door for his girlfriend, either the car is new or the girlfriend is... Or the man is driving a Lotus. Well actually the car IS new, but this is not right. So Monday I have an appointment to get that fixed, hopefully a while-you-wait deal.

In the meantime I've made a couple minor 'livability' mods to the interior. The rear(NO)view mirror came out after some fiddling and I've blacked out the shiny Alpine labels on speaker grilles - they reflected annoyingly in the windshield. Don't the folks at the factory drive these things or do they just not notice this stuff? Whatever, it's done now. If I were keeping the car the radio would have been junked at the same time but I have restrained myself for the sake of its next and real owner. For now.

The Porsche club trackday on the 9th is going to get rained on so Rux will most likely be the lucky one to splash around there, but there's a Lotus/Motocorsa event coming up on the 21st by which time I should have the break-in done. Maybe PIR weather gods will have returned from their winter vacation by then and might give us a nice day to play. Here's hoping.

04/08/08 Yesterday I took Kermit in for service. The dealer (Tonkin GT) is great - they scheduled the fix to be while-you-wait and did in fact manage it in under half hour. "We've seen this before" was their comment - somehow I'm not surprised. Another Elise owner later commented that yeah, the cars have a lot of minor problems but at least nothing major breaks. It won't strand you but it may sometimes test your patience. I guess it's good in some ways, but for a car that's been in production essentially for about 13 years now, you'd think all of that would have been sorted. Lotus being a small company, first-year and even second-year problems are understandable. But 13th-year? Hmmm... Anyway, it's fixed now.

Still haven't driven it much, but on the way to the dealer something happened that made me retract my earlier statement about mirrors being adequate. Namely, I almost changed lanes into a Suburban. It turns out that despite seemingly good field of view in the right mirror, there is in fact a blind spot big enough to completely hide an SUV. And, it so happened, one was indeed hiding there. Fortunately my lane change was very gradual and preceded by blinker being on for half a minute, plus I saw him right away so not an issue. But now lane changes to the right involve signal, look in the mirror, lean forward, look in the mirror again, then look out the side window, and only then slowly move over. Or, if there's someone is already on the right, just punch it and jump in front of them. That works too.

Anyway, as I mentioned the street is not Kermit's element and I'm looking forward to the track. On the list of positive things the car looks awesome. The more I look at it the more I like it. At the dealer it was parked next to a regular Elise for a couple minutes and to me it looks a lot better. I like the roof scoop and the 'spine' intercooler intake, the mesh grilles instead of Elise's gills, the more aggressive fenders. Even the wing doesn't look out of place on it and I'm generally not a fan of those.

The car does need better sound, desperately. The supercharger whine is cool but off-boost it still has the harsh industrial buzz of the normal Elise motor/tranny and it's a bit annoying. For proper sound, today I drove Bikini around on some twisty roads, its first outing as a legally registered car. Now THAT is what a toy car should sound like. The V8 is very tractable and even at low revs moves the 1,200 lb car with casual ease. I should definitely revisit the V8 Exige idea one of these days, once I clear my plate of the current projects. That would be quite a machine. I must say that on the street, in perfect weather and moving at speeds appropriate for the environment, the Atom is a lot more fun (as long as eye protection is worn!). We'll see what the story is on the track - since I haven't yet sampled anything near what either car can do it's tough to predict.

04/12/08 Need to put on some miles before the upcoming track days, so after a brief drive in the Atom, we grabbed Kermit and headed for the coast. There are some excellent back roads that lead there, with almost no traffic and lots of twisty bits. I was somewhat concerned about the possibility of gravel but thakfully the pavement turned out to be pretty clean. One road, that had been quite iffy before, has been freshly repaved which was a nice surprise.

Jumping into the Lotus after the Atom, everything is different (except for the attention you get from others, that's pretty much the same). This is almost like a luxury car. Roof. Windows. Windshield. Even AC that works! It's quiet enough to have a conversation in. The ride is definitely firm (more so than I remember either of my previous Loti being) but it's very well sorted. The car makes you very aware of the pavement but never has a fit over it. Bumps are taken in stride and it stays glued to the road, unlike the Atom which gets a bit freaked out by pavement imperfections.

The Exige definitely inspires confidence. At some point I was running a comfortable pace on a winding bit of two-lane when I came up on a car ahead of me. The closing speed made me check my pace and I realized that I'd been casually doing 65-85 the entire way on a road with corners marked 25-35. The guy ahead seemed to be doing about 45. No wonder.

The trip to the coast took 160 miles instead of the usual 90 or so. A brief pause there, then a relatively straight shot back. Couldn't resist a twisty detour near the end though. So this is a machine in which after 250 miles of brisk progress I'm still inclined to play. Cool :)

With 500 miles on the clock, now it's time to start upping the rev limit from the initial 5K. This is my typical break-in procedure which I've found to work very well time and time again. Take it easy and stay below 5K for the first 500 miles, making sure to vary the load and revs. Then add 1K to the rev limit for every 100 miles. Once redline is reached, time for a trackday! Can't wait.

04/21/08 The break-in is done just in time for the dealer-sponsored trackday. The weather has been looking very iffy in the last couple days, it actually snowed just the day before. I checked several forecasts and they varied from constant rain to cloudy with occasional showers. In other words, they're all just guessing as usual. All did agree that it was going to be cold, high 30s to low 40s F.

In the morning M grabbed the Mini and I the Lotus and off we went. Sky was overcast but the roads dry, and a couple random snowflakes on the way to the track never amounted to anything. So we arrived, got checked in and teched, and waited for the day to start. I got instructor duty as is usual these days. Larry also showed up to instruct and to drive the Exige - he is Kermit's next owner. He also brought his Evo with rain tires, in case it rained. Which it didn't until late afternoon so Larry ended up driving Kermit in the advanced sessions (where I drove DarkHelmet), I drove the Lotus in intermediate where M drove the Mini, and then Larry and I instructed in novice. Lots of seat time, in other words. We filled up both cars with gas immediately before the event and at lunch they were both on fumes, the Exige so much so that it would starve for fuel if you tried to accelerate. Good thing the gas station is near.

The day presented the opportunity for a couple direct comparisons. First off, the Exige is a lot of fun on the track! I was still short-shifting it a bit at 7,500 (which is more symbolic than anything). Also, since I ran it in intermediate, it was hard to get a clean lap due to traffic. The very first lap of my second session in Kermit turned out to be the fastest at 1:32.5 but as the trace below shows some of it was due to the standing start (lap time drops to 1:32.1 if I move the marker to chicane entrance). All that said I was just getting used to the car and not pushing it very hard. Larry, being a much more experienced driver than myself (and it being his car basically) was quite a bit more aggressive and pulled off a few 1:29s with a best of 1:29.36. The traces are below, his is red.

Having quite a bit of rally background Larry tends to drive in continous slides and we have a long-running debate about whether that is better than my somewhat more conservative approach. The Mini seems to prefer my style but as the traces show, Larry's way is more effective in the Exige. Disregarding the initial speed difference due to it being my first lap, you can see he consistently gets better drives out of corners. Braking is very similar, I actually brake harder into turn 10 (and consequently carry less speed through it). Now keep in mind that the car is new to both of us and we're still taking it relatively 'easy' though you wouldn't think it if you rode along. So improvements are to be expected in the future. But the initial impression is excellent - the car is very fun and can be balanced on the throttle just like I'm doing with the Mini. Power delivery is very satisfying. I wouldn't say that it's radically different than the Elise I had earlier, but it's definitely and noticeably better. It's a more linear and controllable engine, not as peaky and therefore more usable for balancing the car in turns. Keep in mind that what we're looking at is a street legal car that can readily do under 1:30 bone stock, exactly as it rolled off the showroom floor, and do it consistently for the whole trackday without losing brakes, tires or anything else. Yes, this is indeed the Lotus I've wanted all along.

Besides the driver comparison, it is also fun to compare the Exige with the Mini. I have a lot more familiarity wth the latter, obviously, and so I'm getting a lot more out of it although today the best I managed was 1:35.0 - almost a second slower than previous best effort. Below are the traces of my best laps in the two cars (should be obvious which is which).

As expected, Kermit leaps ahead on the straights. It should dominate corners as well (and the car can, obviously - just look at the previous set of plots) but on this day with me driving, the Mini carried more corner speed everywhere except turn 10, despite being on inferior tires. Classic example of driver familiarity making a difference. The fact that I was faster through 10 in the Lotus is worth a mention - that's downforce at play. It is a high-speed corner and the car feels very stable through it, inspiring confidence and the will to push it harder. Of course as seen earlier Larry is faster still through there, so car's capability is one thing and driver actually asking the car to perform is quite another.

All in all a very educational and fun day and many thanks go to Lotus of Portland / Motocorsa for putting it on. They even arranged Lotus factory folks to visit and it was very interesting chatting with them. The entire morning was dry despite doom and gloom on the Internet weather forecasts, so when the skies finally did open up in late afternoon, we just headed home. I ended up driving 5 sessions and riding along for 5as an instructor, M drove 4 and rode along for 3 as passenger. That's a lot of time wearing a helmet! More of the story on the Mini page. Whew.

04/28/08 Second trackday for Kermit. Technically it is no longer mine but I still get to play with it so for a while this page will stay among the active ones. Heck, I'm using it a lot more than any of the bikes! That's something that I need to address regardless, but back to the Exige. Last time Larry rode along with me and had some suggestions on different lines and strategies to try. The idea is to get on the gas as early and as hard as possible in each turn, and to adjust the driving style to maximize this (may seem obvious but there's quite a bit to it actually and it's harder than it sounds). Today I did just that and the car seems to prefer it. I wasn't any faster, yet. But from the way the car responds I can tell that there is a lot more to be gained this way (with lots of determination and work, to be sure) versus being near the limits of what I was doing previously.

The Exige is a challenging car to be fast in. You can FEEL like you're going fast but the data logs might show a different story. This explains why I sometimes pass Exiges in my Mini, in the Instructor group. No doubt, the car has the capability for very quick lap times, but to actually extract them takes skill and even more importantly a considerable will to do so. This is why Larry likes it. The EVO virtually drives itself by comparison, albeit sideways, and it's easy to feel and look like a hero in it. The Lotus on the other hand might make you feel like you're the bat out of hell out on the track but unless you're on top of the game the datalogs will bring you down. So right now my best times in the Exige only slightly surpass my best times in the Mini on R compounds. But I'm still experimenting and things will improve.

It never ceases to amaze me just how much there is to learn every time I'm out here. That's what keeps it from getting routine, even after all the years I've been doing it. Always experiments to perform, data to record and analyze, techniques to test. Datalogger is an indispensable tool in all this. I can honestly say that if I were just running laps around the track, with no means of measuring progress other than subjective feel, I probably wouldn't be doing these events nearly as often as I do now. You can only drive the same two miles so many times, unless there are other things going on and the track is just something that facilitates them. My thanks again to the city of Portland for making it possible and so very accessible.