The car thread 2.

[Brad]

Noice! I want a lotus one day.

[charlesr]

1000 miles so decided to give it some beans. First test away from some lights on a roundabout, round a corner on to a motorway sliproad. The first couple of gears are very similarly spaced as mine, so I noticed having to change gear a bit quicker. I also noticed skipping across the corner over a lip while in 3rd - combination of going faster than expected and the hard suspension. Looking at the speedo in 4th was a bit of a heart-attack moment - anchors on! The gears up there are much more widely spaced than I'm used to.

Sensation of speed / acceleration in a straight line - it's a higher driving position, the chassis is daftly stiff and the suspension is quite firm so there's no lurch at all under acceleration or dive under braking. These combine to make the actually feeling of speed far less than I'm used to, although maybe all modern cars are like this. It just arrived at speed without any fuss. So, yeah, it's super fast and incredible fun in the twisties, but drag off the line isn't the storming noisy experience I'm used to. Brakes though - awesome.

Keeping it nailed in the twisties was er... quite exciting. There's more lag and then when it comes in, the torque feels large and flat throughout the range, so it pulls like a train the whole way through - in mine there's very little lag (small turbo) and the torque kicks in suddenly and tails off. In the new one, I'm having to put my foot down slightly earlier in the corner so that it's spooling on exit, but I'm way not used to the extra power yet. It'll take a while to learn how to drive I think. Yes, I'm a bit scared of it.

[Colin]

Haha, nothing wrong with a bit of respect toward a quick car! (Or fear!)

Back in the Lotus gang as of an hour ago, collect two weeks today.

[charlesr]

God yes, great choice

[Brad]

Wow! Gizza go in it mister!

[QualityChimp]

Amazing!

Does it turn into a Submarine?

[nakamura]

Sweet, Colin!

[Colin]

Cheers. Since I'm an old man I've gone for a flappy paddle box this time instead of the manual like my old one. God I'm getting lazy......

[CMcK]

After owning a car with a DSG box for a few years now I won't go back to a manual. My good lady insisted on a manual on the Passat and it feels so out of place. Especially when you have the active cruise control on and forget you need to change gear as you slow down!

[Atticus]

Love the Lotus Colin

[Colin]

Cheers mate. I have a week off in three weeks too, perfect timing, going to do the north coast 500 with the other half.

Love the updated interior in comparison to my old Evora S -



Nice to see they've put the 'sold' sticker in the window now.

[nakamura]

Proper car that.

What model? NA or Supercharged? Runs the 2GR engine iirc.

[Colin]

Supercharged, Martin. 345bhp, if I remember rightly 0-60 in about 4.4sec. It's basically the same car I had before apart from the colour, alloys and interior. And yup, tweaked Toyota lump.

[nakamura]

Cracking!

Those engines are very good. People are taking them out of big family wagons and popping them in too all kinda of 90s Toyota's.

[Gradius]

My new(ish) ride.

1.4t sportiva Giulietta. It's a dual clutch semi-auto which has opened my eyes to the joy of lazy driving.

So much nicer than the ecoboost fiesta I part exed!