My Lotus Elise Owners Diary March 2001


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My Owners Diary March 2001 Previous Entry \| Diary Index \| Next Entry 7^th March 2001 Someone kindly sent me a picture of the Elise S2 as it would look with a matching hardtop. I like it! 8^th March 2001 Some depressing local news this morning on both radio and TV. Lotus are laying off staff to reduce costs at Hethel. Let's hope they can resolve the production issues with the Elise S2 and increase both sales and the workforce soon. 12^th March 2001 Rumour has it that a few more dealerships may be going into receivership. Tony Thompson has a photograph of an Elise S2 in Silver and just as I thought, the light colour and extra detail of the S2 does not work at all. If the light surrounds and bonnet/boot vents could be colour coded, this would be a better looking car. I'm sure the vents could be done but what about the light surrounds? Apparently not for a while. Shame! 14^th March 2001 Good news! Vauxhall are planning a hot version of the VX220, either with a upgraded engine with more top end performance and 185bhp or a turbocharged version along the lines of the Astra Coupe, delivering 187bhp at 5,400rpm, and hitting a peak 250Nm of torque at 1,900rpm. The latter is a fair bit heavier. Why is this such good news? Because it puts pressure on Lotus to build a higher powered derivative of the Elise S2. More detail on the Auto Express website. THe waiting list for the VX220 has now dropped to about 2-3 months due to less demand from abroad than expected. Orders placed now should appear in June/July time. 19^th March 2001 The first customer cars are leaving the factory line this week. Those already in possession have bought dealer demonstrators. Only 18 cars a week are being produced at present. So much for those 400 pre-specified cars which Lotus implied had already been built at the motorshow. BT Internet have cut my web hosting space down to 10Mbytes without telling me. This is a bit of a pain since this site is currently at 78Mbytes. Had to move the site to www.elises.co.uk overnight to solve the problem and fork out for 100Mbytes of hosting space. 21^st March 2001 Missed the OLC meeting last night due to both children being ill. Nick Adams took people on a tour of the Elise S2 production line which must have been good. Such is life! 24^th March 2001 Lotus have added some new pictures of the S2 in various colour not seen before. Within the gallery section there are also some superb computer generated images of a Silver S2, which have made it onto my desktop. 29^th March 2001 No sign of the orange Stack unit lighting yet but it would appear that the customer S2's are to have bolder and more legible dial graphics in response to various requests for improvement. Those that have bought dealers demo cars or press cars will be able to tell from the stack unit buty customer cars are also numbered from VIN 0122 onwards. Details on the stage 1 upgrade kit for the S2 should be out fairly soon. Previous Entry \| Diary Index \| Next Entry
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