So, my wife Sue and I had been talking about buying an Elise off and on for several years. We recently got a little inheritance money that was earning a whopping .15% interest in the bank so we decided to invest in a little bit of fun instead.
I started seriously researching and looking for a used Elise. Coincidentally with my search, the price of used Elise’s went up big time due to Lotus announcing they would not be making any more new ones. In 2011 you could buy a real nice, low mileage, unmolested example in any color you wanted for about $25,000. Now that I started looking in the summer of 2012, prices start at $31,000 with very nice ones being advertised for $45,000 or more.
I saw a real nice 2008 60th year anniversary model with only 7,000 miles go up for sale on craigslist in South Carolina for $37,000. It had a VIN number on the ad so I did a quick Carfax report on it, but I was confused to find that the car belonged to someone in Maryland. Come to find out, a dealer had snapped it up and was now advertising it for $46,900.
Bill Nuccio had advertised a White 2009 purest edition with only 1700 miles on it for only a slightly high price. Within a week, it was gone and being advertised by someone else down the road for $6,000 more. It was getting to be a real challenge to compete with the dealers. I found another Enthusiasts Edition with 2,500 miles being advertised by a private owner in Cincinnati, but he would not budge off his $40,000 asking price. Part of my problem was that I was trying to avoid the 2005 model, as they had seats that had as much padding as a church pew. My back is bad enough as it is so I was looking to avoid another surgery.
I had checked out a couple cars on “Lotus Talk” that were for sale. The first one looked great and was at a reasonable price, but when I found some videos of that exact car being “tested” on the back roads and mountains of California, I did not want to have anything to do with it. A second car turned out to be the same thing. I found a Youtube video of the guy pushing the heck out of the car and being videoed going 155 mph. No thanks.
I spotted another craigslist add for a 8k mile, 60 year anniversary, factory super charged model in Silver with red stripes. The ad was placed in Detroit. I was at work and actually had some work to do so I wrote down the phone number. Later on I went to look for the ad again but it was gone. The seller had pulled the ad. I gave the number I had written down a call and it rang and rang and rang. Finally someone answered with a little hello. I explained I was calling about the Elise for sale and the guy on the phone said “oh”. He hemmed and hawed a bit and then explained that he was on the fence about selling the car. The ad had listed the car for $38,000 but now after talking with the guy (actually he talked and I could not get a word in edgewise) he said he needed the money but his wife did not want to sell the car. After another 10 minutes of listening to him he said that if I wanted the car I could have it for $42,000. I was flabbergasted that the price had gone up but the car sounded to be just the car I wanted. It was also much, much more than I wanted to spend. I told him I would have to sleep on it. Sue and I discussed the decision and we could not decide. So, he was not sure if he wanted to sell it and we were not sure if we wanted to buy it but when he called me back the next day I decided to go for it and I said yes. I sent him an email to confirm that I would go to the bank Wednesday to get a check and then take an Amtrak train on Thursday morning to come pick up the car. Wednesday morning at 5:50 am the phone rings. I wake up and half asleep I pick it up and it’s a Sprint/Nextel text to landline message. Apparently you can now send a text message to a non cell phone and this service will robo-read the message to you when you press 1. So I pressed 1. And the message was read to me in a robot like voice: “Don’t go to bank for the check. Crazy wife stole the car and hid it on me!” So, the short version of that was that that deal did not go through…
So I mentioned this story to Bill Greenwald in an email. He responded that he had been thinking of selling his 2005 Bordeaux Red Elise with 9k miles on it. I had not considered buying Bill’s car but he shot me a price that was very appealing. So Sue and I went to check out the car the next evening. We arrived and Bill said: “It’s a typical Lotus, it won’t start; the battery is dead”. He hadn’t driven it in a month and the tiny battery got discharged by the alarm system. He now had the charger running on it and when he tried again, this time it fired right up. Bill backed it out of his tight driveway and Sue and I gave it the walk around. Now Sue had been resistant to buying the car from Bill because she knew Bill had shall we say “Taken Advantage” of the Elise quite a bit? Bill had been to a couple track day events and some auto-crosses, so Sue thought maybe the car was beat. But now that she saw the car in the setting sunlight she really liked the Bordeaux red exterior and biscuit colored interior. She looked at me and nodded her head slowly and silently in approval. We took Bill’s car out for a little drive around the neighborhood, returned and wrote him a check. Bill threw in two extra sets of tires and wheels for a few bucks more. Good thing we brought the Audi wagon.
This is the first Lotus I have bought that I did not have to assemble myself. I usually buy them in boxes after someone took them apart and let them rot for 20 years. Now all I have to do is press the key fob, turn the key and push the start button and it starts and runs perfectly. Wow, what a concept! But I need to check things out, so I changed the plugs first. Interesting buying plugs for a Lotus at Auto zone. “Lotus? Who makes Lotus?” I was asked by the kid at the counter. Lotus makes Lotus I responded. Deer in the headlights look returned. OK, how about plugs for a 2005 Toyota Celica GTS? Now we are talking his language. The plugs went in no sweat and I could feel the difference in performance. On to the air filter. I bought a K&N re-placement filter on line and looked in the manual to see how to get at the filter. Not easy. You jack up the car, remove the left rear tire and then remove the plastic wheel well liner! It really wasn’t bad, just took a while. It took about an hour to change the filter. Good thing you don’t have to do that very often. Gone are the days of the single wing nut access to the air cleaner sitting on top of the engine. Now she runs even better and you can hear the engine intake howl when you really put your foot into her.
Next up – an oil change. I purchased the Toyota oil filter on line but I wanted to buy the oil locally. Finding the recommended 5W40 full synthetic took a few stops but I found some Mobil 1 ON SALE at NAPA! I jacked up the car and removed the screws on the bottom of the air diffuser under the engine. I had seen many people changing their oil at the Lotus Corps tune up clinics and so I thought I knew what I was doing. However when I had removed the 14 screws and dropped the rear diffuser panel and looked up, I did not see an oil pan. Interesting! Apparently I had pulled off the wrong panel. There was another one a bit forward requiring the removal of a few more screws. Oh well. This gives me the opportunity to remove the Sod Farm that had been deposited back there from the previous owner. Changing the oil and filter was straight forward after that. The only confusing thing to me was the lack of oil leaks. I’m used to having to clean things up and tighten all sorts of bolts. Nothing to do here except scrub the aluminum panels a bit and enlist the spousal unit to assist in putting the panels back in place.
I pulled out the seats and pulled back the center padding. The stock padding is about as thick as a postage stamp but there is a little pump up air bladder that is supposed to help with the small of your back. Unfortunately is it located in the wrong spot to do any good. By pulling out the center padding however, I could easily flip the bladder over to a lower spot and re-glue it in place. I added some additional padding while I had it all apart. Some firm rubber and some softer foam and now I can drive the car all day without any aches.
So here are a couple things that have never happened to me in a Lotus before. The first thing is that I have never had the opportunity to “Downshift into 5th”. That 6th gear sure gives you a lot of leg on the expressway. No more buzzing the Twin Cam to 5 grand just to keep up with traffic. The second thing is the car alarm. Normally the only thing that will wake you up in the middle of the night on a Lotus is spontaneous combustion. Now that we have an Elise with a car alarm, we get woken up when the mice in the garage try to find a cozy spot for the winter and they set off the car alarm!
So “Cherry” (Sue named our Elise Cherry because the deep Bordeaux red color looks like a very ripe Cherry) is now all cleaned up, tuned up, padded up, oil changed up and ready for the road. Sue and I started taking her to the Lotus Corps meetings, events, some car shows and just out for some fun runs. Now we get to the part that explains the title of this article. Over and over and over again, as I talk to someone in the club and show off Cherry, I find out that Cherry is not really a Cherry. Many, many people have already had their way with Cherry. Besides Bill, I knew that Paul Quiniff had already taken Cherry for a ride at Blackhawk Farms raceway. In talking with Dennis Stahl, I find that both he and Alfred Kitch had taken Cherry out on a date to a car show or two. Dennis even took his son out for a ride with Cherry. I was talking to Alan Andrea at the Cars and Coffee show in Winnetka, and he started telling me about the good time he had with Cherry at Blackhawk. Finally at the Fall Tour I found out that Dave Korwin had also taken Cherry out for a run at Blackhawk as well.
So buying a used Elise is like dating a hooker and going up to your friends to introduce her, only to find out that they already know her intimately well. Well, we still think she is beautiful, well endowed with terrific performance skills and she still has low miles. So Sue and I love her but we don’t want to hear any more about her past experiences thank you! We all know that when it comes to a Lotus Elise, a good time was had by all.
