Joe G
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 22, 2002
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For the last several months I've been driving a Lotus Elise 111S in Lava orange with black interior
(except mine has 11-spoke wheels with a matt finish) and my wife has had an orange with black roof-rails Citroen Pluriel 1.6
hatchback/cabrio/roadster/pickup truck for about a year now. We're a young couple, so we're allowed to have bright orange cars. The Elise is a perfect car. It is much cheaper than an M3, and it is lightning in a bottle to drive. The trunk has enough space for a garment bag, too. When I last visited this forum, I had an Opel Speedster that looked something like this:
The Opel Speedster is essentially a rebodied Lotus Elise with the General Motors Ecotec lump in place of the Lotus's Rover K-Series. (I understand American-market Elises will have a Toyota engine.) While it looked spectacular and drove even better, that car was a complete and utter nightmare. The Lotus bits worked perfectly; the handling was sublime and even the hood kept me dry. However, anything made by GM turned quickly to shite. The timing chain snapped on me, the clutch shuddered incessantly from day one and I had several other powertrain issues before prevailing upon Opel to buy the damned thing back. I feel for those poor fools who will buy that new Pontiac Solstice and think they're getting a real car. After being freed of mine, I bought the real thing and have nary a regret. When we have kids, I'll probably get a bigger car, perhaps a Volvo S60R or an Audi A8 4.0TDI. Peace, JG