9 Ways An American Reacts To Driving A Lotus Elise For The First Time

I wanted to be British after driving this car. I wanted to know what it is like to eat that Fish and Chips and bellow unintelligible hot noise about Manchester United. I wanted to get caught in the rain in this little Lotus and not turn around to gather my car’s roof from my flat in Norwich.

But I’m not British, I am an American, which is why I’ll never experience these beguiling things. So here’s an American experience of your little orange toy car:

1. There's 'small' and there's 'Lotus-small'

When I reviewed this Lotus Elise, I owned a 2002 Toyota Echo/Yaris. I thought my car was as small as it got in America. Nope. Look at the Elise here. It’s a damned ant. It made my tiny car look like a High Fructose Corn Syrup NRA member lumbering though WalMart in an electric mobility scooter covered in Call of Duty Stickers. I am 5ft 11 inches (178 cm) and the roof of this car ends at my waist.

2. Wow, this is a low car

Even though the tip of my baby maker is taller than this car (after watching ‘Are You Being Served?’) I didn’t sit in this Elise, I fell into it. It was a trust-fall and an Elise is a jackass that let me fall about a foot farther just to scare me. It stiffly caught me with hard drunk-uncle hands. “What?…it was JUST A JOKE,” the car insisted.

3. Corvette doesn't own the naturally-aspirated crown

You live in the USA? Do you go about your day trumpeting platitudes about “honest work” and the incorrupt Juggernaut-President Gerald Ford? Well plant another flag because it’s time for the Freedom Sale at Super Tent Chevrolet! Woah, I fell down a ‘Merica hole there.

I’m back.

The Chevy Corvette is paraded as the natural aspiration’s Manifest Destiny. The Corvette is supposed to be the best example of what a no-cheating car can be (never mind that Corvettes can come supercharged). Nothing makes Dads churn in agreement like the greasy sentence: “There’s no replacement for displacement.” Yet, The Lotus Elise’s 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine is more exciting than The Corvette C7’s 6.2-litre V8. The Elise jumps forward with every movement of your big toe. The car has invisible arms that reach out and grab utility poles. Those ethereal arms allow it to swing around corners like a youngster grabs onto street-sign poles to race around town blocks.

4. Build quality? 'No, that's normal, sir'

Look at the manual. I’ve never, ever seen weasel words like these before:

‘The constant changing of loads and strains to which a car is subject to when driving on roads, and the tolerances required to allow for repeated removal and refitting of the roof, means that minor wind noise, and seepage at joints between the roof, body and doors cannot be completely sealed in certain areas. Therefore small leaks are considered normal for this model.’

By the Gods, that is brilliant. The manual appeals to your unshaven sense of manliness. Even women will grow mustaches after reading these Churchillian words.

5. Tow trucks will break this car

Look at how they expect me to hoist this car. Designated lift points? Americans would never stand for this procedure. Any car worth its aluminium should be goddamned jacked up with a Banker’s Club Gin, stamped-steel, hydraulic violator of a tow truck, then dragged for 171 miles back, through the Allegheny mountains, to a rust repair shop.

6. S2000s may be cop-magnets, but this is a cop-homing beacon

Every disconcerting nugget of fear of ‘The Other’ that passes through the reptilian complex sector of an American traffic cop’s brain, screams for vengeance and money when news of a Lotus Elise crackles through the police radio. It’s not the cop’s fault, it’s ours. We let patriotism fester into fascist tumours in parts of The Commonwealth. I drove this car with the fear that I was openly mocking God and every one of his Marlboro miles.

7. The steering wheel is not much larger than your hand.

Just when the whole damn UN-American toy car insults every trembling church goer on Easter Sunday, with its high and shrill exhaust, it soothes you with a tiny steering wheel. The wheel makes your hands feel big. Big hands, big flagpole. You feel like an alpha driving this car, no matter how beta you are with the ladies. Yes ladies, I AM at least six feet tall! With interior shots of my hands driving this, I can back up exterior shots of me standing next to this Lotus.

8. What's up with these lug nuts?

How am I to change a tyre? What if I lose that special tool that only you make. I’m sure this star pattern is sightly different than the standard anti-tamper wheel stud. You’re really sticking it to me now. How can I salve my ex-patriot desires with this starfish looking at me multiple times from each wheel? It’s Nanny-State engineering, I tell you! Why do I want more? I want to be bent over the engine, hot like the rising sun. Beat me Julian Thompson. You designed this car but I don’t deserve to know what hides behind these wheels. I am a bad curious cat.

9. No spare tyre

Of course there is no spare tyre, because OF COURSE there isn’t. All the other eight ‘Merica reactions to this little British roadster must queue up behind big number nine. My people don’t understand ‘no spare’ logic. It flies in the face of what Rich Hall said about American thinking. Hall said the two main themes that lie at the root of every American decision are “Individualism” and “Self-Reliance.”

I don’t like being told that I have to wait for rescue. I don’t like this Lend-Lease Fix-A-Flat tube of goo that Lotus gives me in place of a tyre. If Subaru could get away with placing the spare tire inside the engine compartment of the Brat, I should be able to get a space-saver doughnut for this Elise. Grant me the dignity of driving myself away from a puncture.