I'm proud to introduce the newest addition to the family, a 2005 Krypton Green Lotus Elise!
For being 8 years old, the car is mint! The original owner, currently 73 years old, recently traded the car in on an evora for the ease of the auto transmission. Until the day I picked her up a few weeks ago, she had never even seen rain, a car wash, or certainly a racetrack; only driven on sunny summer afternoons and garaged all year round. Full service history with the dealership we purchased the car from, who also sold it in the first place. The original owner felt no need to even rev the car up over 6k rpm and into the second cam, so in many ways I'm still breaking the car in and it only had 6,600 miles on it when I took delivery. So his loss = my gain!
Still keeping the 370 and will continue to love the Z as my DD for years to come. I will probably still track it once or twice a year, no sense spending all that money on cooling issues and fuel starvation fixes, if I can't see the car at its full potential, without having to worry about being towed-into or limping-into the paddock.
So the hunt for the perfect car came down to a used p-car (pref. either 996 GT3 or a cayman S), waiting and waiting to have an atom built (or wasting $ on one that could have been beat to s**t and hating myself everyday for that decision), or a lotus elise/exige. I could get into all the reasons for why or why not for each of those cars but that's not the point of my post. In the end it came down to the 15 minute test-drive after the dealership called and said they had just taken in a car on trade that they thought was exactly what I was looking for. By the time we finished the paperwork, the dealership had already received over a dozen offers to purchase at or even over the asking price.
And I haven't looked back since! For me, that little toyota 4-cyl 1,700 lb Kermit the frog edition go-kart is the most fun I've ever had behind the wheel and that's saying a lot!
The elise will be making her debut HPDE appearance next month at Putnam Park or potentially as early as the end of September at my home track, Mid-Ohio. I can't wait!!! Anyone interested in attending or already signed up for either PCA event, let me know. Its always nice to meet some new friends and see some other Z's in action!
BTW if I've offended you in any way or you want to argue with me as to why the elise is not the "perfect" car for me, that I just don't know how to drive the 370z, that the other options I was looking at would be like comparing apples to oranges (which I certainly know), and the list goes on... I apologize in advance and feel free to flame on, but frankly, I don't care!
Look how cute and little it is next to Godzilla!
It's even dwarfed by the Z! It does make you wonder, if only the Z weighed half as much as it does...
