A little bit about our first Lotus, Elsie, a stock Lotus Elise, registration R579 FAA.  We waited over 12 months on the waiting list for her and had some great times driving around just for fun!

I have never driven anything as much fun as this car, with the possible exception of a 350cc go-kart that a friend of my father's built once.

Elsie is the car we have currently got, due to be replaced in January 2000 by Car no. 66. We got her in January 1998 and she's done about 5,000 miles of over the last couple of years.  We'll be sorry to let her go.

We had a problem choosing the colour initially, it came down to a choice between Chrome Orange and Titanium.  In the end we decided to go for Chrome Orange as it looks absolutely mad (it's actually a metallic orange) with blue leather seats and a blue hood, plus the radio fitting kit, alarm/immobiliser and driving lights.

Our first problem was when the windscreen got cracked by a wayward chipping.  To replace the windscreen the whole front bodywork was removed, though I found out later that this isn't strictly necessary.  This is what an Elise looks like without the front clamshell at Haydon cars in Salisbury having the windscreen replaced.

The next thing that happened was when I was at a band rehearsal around a mates house and had parked Elsie on his drive.  We were just about to start rehearsing and shut the (electric) garage door.  Unfortunatley I had parked a little too close to the door and the door jammed on Elsie's nose causing some minor scratches.

And the only other problem we had was when the throttle linkage came apart in the supermarket car park.  I managed to lash it up so I had about 1500 rpm of throttle available to limp the 2 miles home, but that also came apart half way and I made it the rest of the way home by driving with my nose pressed against the steering wheel, reaching down under the dash and operating the throttle by hand.