My Lotus Diary March 2002

4^th March 2002

18^th March 2002

19^th March 2002

There is an article in EVO magazine featuring the Noble M12 and the latest Lotus Esprit. An interesting statement from David Noon, of Nick Whale Sportscars caught my attention. Talking about the sorts of people who buy Noble and Lotus cars, David Noon goes on to say that although both are bought by enthusiasts, Lotus customers buy into the brand as much as the car itself. I think this is definately true. There is something about the Lotus brand and ownership experience. Some might call it badge snobbery, but it isn't that simple. It's something that is hard to define, that adds to the whole ownership experience. You feel it when you go to the factory and when you visit a local track. It's a combination of history and reputation, a community atmosphere, like you've bought a piece of that history with your new car. It's something that adds to the experience of owning an Elise, something that a car like the Vauxhall VX220 will never have, despite them being technically similarly. I guess it's partly this that keeps me longing for another Elise, when there are plenty of other good cars out there, often for a lot less money.

Talking of which, a friend at work is importing a Mazda MX5 1.8 and it's going to cost him £12,500 on the road! Whilst it's no Elise, the MX5 is a very good car and at this kind of money, an absolute bargain. I'm almost tempted to run around in one of these for the summer myself but it would distract me from my ultimate goal, another Elise.

20^th March 2002

21^st March 2002

22^nd March 2002

The concept of a 'World car' Elise is a dangerous one for Lotus as the American market will require considerable changes to the Elise concept. The brief of the original Elise was to produce the perfect track and road car compromise. Filling it with goodies and electronic safety aids moves away from this brief. The more the Elise moves towards being a road car, the more competition is faces, some of which it simply can't compete with on price. Similarly, it is never going to reach the cost/performance balance of a Caterham 7. It was a very fine line that the original Elise walked so well and Lotus should realise that future Elise development needs to focus on this the same brief. The Elise is incredibly successful in this market but it is a niche one, with fairly low volumes. Lotus needs to accept this and use the technologies to expand into other, larger markets, not the Elise itself. The Strathcarron is also a good example of what may happen if the Elise was to stray too far in the track orientated direction.

If Lotus want to increase sales then they need a new car that works outside of this brief, and produce a more road orientated convertable, with more luxurious interior and more safety devices. Such a car needs to be slightly larger, more powerful and more practical, yet must retain the Lotus core attributes in ride and handling. It could be considered an Elise variant to some but from a marketing perspective, it needs to be a new model. Lotus have the production capacity to do it but, do they have the required management direction and funds to develop a new model? If Lotus needed a benchmark car to work against, they couldn't do much worse than look at the Noble M12. By sharing technology and components between this new car and the Elise, Lotus could produce a very nice competitor for the Noble with a price tag around the £28k mark. This would storm the Boxster and Honda S2000 market segment and provide the volumes that Lotus need so badly.

25^th March 2002

Lots of well sourced rumours that Rover is about to launch a turbo-charged K-series engine for possible use in the MGTF and Caterham. It will probably take a while but it may make it into an Elise eventually.

Power Train Projects (suppliers to Lotus of the Elise S1 Sport 135 kit) now offer a PTP140 upgrade package for the Elise S2 which includes a ported cyclinder head, air box and filter and a sports exhaust. More details in the S2 engine section. What I'd like to know is, how the performance and the power delivery compares to the official Lotus Sport 135 upgrade as this is more expensive but includes a new inlet manifold and reprogrammed ECU. This is the question I have set myself to answer this week.

28^th March 2002

Made the mistake of popping into my local Lotus dealership this afternoon to see if they have a Sport 135 demonstrator yet. Big mistake, it simply reminded me how much I desire another Elise. Turns out my visit was quite timely though, as Edmondson Lotus was packing up and moving to new premises today, in North Ipswich. Plenty of S2's around in various colours. Still prefer the darker colours but the Silver S2 looked good. On closer inspection I noticed it was covered from front to back with protective film. Impossible to see unless you look carefully but this was a two-year old car without a single paint chip in sight. If I placed an order today I could have an Elise delivered in six weeks apparently.

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