Albeit with some amount of skepticism. “This is the future of Lotus going forward” — really? Much as we’d like for that to be the case, that’s not what we heard (although in fairness, the Smoking Tire review predates the Lotus report by about two months).
As much as we like the Esprit (it is such a looker, even after all these years), and as special a car as it may be, we’ll take the Elise of the two. That’s not terribly surprising – not dissimilar from how we prefer the 944 or 968’s nimbler driver’s car to the 928’s grand tourer – but what is is that we think the Elise arguably even sounds better (yes, with all four of its Toyota-sourced cylinders) than the turbocharged Esprit, which oddly doesn’t do much for us. We don’t doubt that it probably sounds a heck of a lot better in the metal, but still— when it comes to V8s, we prefer the naturally aspirated type from that other British marque.
And how nice are those canyon roads? California just kills us with those world class driving roads that we can’t have. They, and not the cars, are arguably the main attraction here.
Motoring Con Brio 