Hi Grant,
The fun factor is very high and I'm enjoying myself! However, these cars are far from perfect and are marked by some compromises. Fortunately, a few local owners gave me the opportunity to evaluate the car at social/track meets and listen to their experiences. There weren't really any surprises by the time delivery came around.
Essentially you give up a lot of elements cars like the Boxster have that allow them to be more daily cars for the majority of sports car drivers. I do not drive mine daily, but I could probably do so if needed. In return, you get a car that is more connected with the road and filters out less of the driving experience. I'm sure you are no stranger to this kind of motoring with your 911. In some ways it's like a throwback car, because very few cars today offer this kind of experience.
The car is not as refined as its competition and that is part of the charm. Porsche tends to find a very good balance between refinement and sporting nature, but the Lotus is basically for driving and enjoying taking the long way to your destination. This current iteration quite a bit more civil than those in the past, so the Elise is very much a road car by Lotus standards. But people keep telling me its a track car only, for whatever reason. The interior is functional, but not what I would call a lounge. Fiberglass seat, steering wheel, shifter, pedals, and a radio that doesn't sound too good as the speed climbs. It's a sports car.
The engine is not the most sophisticated and is peaky, but overall it suits the personality of the car. Lacks some low end grunt and I'm sure the ultimate acceleration at higher speeds (above 100 mph) is not sufficient for some. The 250hp Exige supercharger kit should put all of those concerns to rest and it should be easily adaptable for the Elise. For me the power is adequate as I'm still learning to drive it to its potential.
The base suspension is a great street setup and most good drivers can work around some of the understeer at the limit. If you really like oversteer I suggest getting wider fronts or going with the sports package. The sport package has the same suspension as the Exige and most of the extra stiffness is go accomodate the stickier tires. Hard core track junkies will want to get an aftermarket set of shocks/springs and a stiffer front bar. The difficulty in tuning this car is that it's setup very specifically for the tires that it comes with. Once you start changing things like tire sizes and sway bars, you get a slight improvement, but you have to reconfigure the entire suspension to get it optimal. A lot of drivers find the sport package with an alignment to be a great road and track setup and don't change it from there.
Overall, I know it's not the fastest car out there, and maybe it does not even generate the most cornering force. But this lightweight philosophy is really something the sports car world needs to embrace. Driving a twisty road with near perfect steering and a car that reacts quickly to inputs is sublime. It's very tidy and if you jump back into a heavier car, the latter tends to start feeling sloppy and not as composed. By comparison, you could have a C6 Vette for the same money that is several seconds faster on most road courses. But I picked fun and precision instead. Lotus has done a remarkable job considering their engineering budget and the resources they have to obtain an engine suitable for our market. Given Porsche's resources, they could start refining the car's drivetrain and build quality to move it upmarket, but that's another discussion.
BTW, Lotus was waiting for Toyota to develop a better engine than the 2ZZ-GE for the high powered Exige, but it never happened, so they had to supercharge it!
- J
PS: Check out this thread for some of the compromises you would have to deal with:
http://www.elisetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10186
