I just got back from a business trip to the UK. I didn’t have enough time to get to the Lotus factory or a dealer while they were open. I was able to visit the closest dealer, about 1 hour from where we were, one night after work. They had a yellow, silver, and black Elise. Here are my impressions:
1.The car looks as good in person as it does in the magazines.
2.Assuming the US yellow is the same as the current production UK yellow, it was definitely not school bus or taxi cab yellow. I would place it much closer to the Mica Yellow of the ‘92/’02 Miata or the yellow of the modern Corvette’s.
3.I was leaning towards BRG as a color, but after seeing the lighter colored cars I’m reconsidering. The silver and yellow looked sharp.
4.I’ll preference this by saying I have never liked black wheels…..The yellow Elise had the black wheels and I did not think it looked good. To each his own on this one.
5.There have been comments on the overall size of the car, but it didn’t look that small. For small look at the Smart (
www.smart.com).
6.The engine hatch looked small which leads me to be believe the storage compartment, or at least access to the storage compartment, is very small and one thing I need to see up close.
I never saw a S2 on the road or in any of the car parks in the 5 days I was there. I have several European car magazines that I picked up with Elise 111R and Vauxhall VX220 articles so I’ll look in the ‘News and Reviews’ section to see if they are in there. One comment that came up in long term testing articles of two Vauxhalls is the heater/defroster was very inefficient. I assume the VX has the same heater system as the Elise since the controls look identical.
If you go I’d recommend renting a manual diesel vehicle if you don’t rent an Elise. The manuals are ½ the cost (30 vs. 60 pounds per day for a mid size 4 door) and the diesel is much more fuel efficient. We rented two vehicles one gasoline/automatic and the other manual/diesel. The diesel cost about 30 pounds ($50 US) for 3/4 of a tank of fuel while the gasoline vehicle cost about 40 something pounds to fill with approximately the same miles. It isn’t that hard to get used to driving on the other side of the road and the manual was also easy. I think it cost about 90 pounds per day ($160) to rent an Elise. National had a Mini Cooper S for 60 pounds per day.
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