EliseInfo.com

My wife and I took the Elise for a road trip the other weekend, from our home near San Jose (California) to Orange county for the weekend. For the drive down, we chose highway 1, of course, and had a fun, relaxing drive (I say relaxing because this time of year, there’s a fair amount of traffic on that road, making fast driving difficult). A brief stop in Solvang (for some Danish pastries, naturally!) was followed by a donation to the local Indian tribe via their conveniently placed casino on the eastern edge of town (nice place, too bad Craps isn’t allowed in California, though they had $5 blackjack tables so that’s OK). Later in the day, we got our taste of rush hour traffic trying to get through Santa Barbara (this was on a Friday). Yuck. Coming home on Sunday, took I-5, and wouldn’t you know it, temperatures were around 105 that day. The Elise’s air conditioning was incredibly inadequate, though I believe that’s mostly because the recirculation flap wasn’t working - so, the A/C could only do so much when cooling the 105 degree outside air. To add to the problems, the chassis parts exposed in the passenger cabin were very, very hot - you could barely touch them. Lastly, we noticed a really horrible squeaking noise coming from the front suspension. It sounded like the suspension bushings. In the cooler weather back here at home the noise has disappeared, so it seems heat related and not a big problem. Oh yeah, and now I’ve got a rattle from the rear that sounds like the diffuser bolts coming undone. The Elise is a fantastic toy, but really, it’s no GT car! I would have much preferred an NSX for that drive. However, the smiles on the faces of my cousins in Orange was priceless; I played taxi for a while, giving lots of them rides and opening their eyes to what cars can do (it’s sad how many people seem ignorant of this fast, probably due to their direct experience with cars being the more mundane SUVs).