defproc

Remember the beautiful little blue Lotus Elise I'd been supplied with as a lease car while the battle rages on over whether I should be fairly compensated for the loss of my own car? Well I was driving it yesterday and suddenly it crashed, completely without warning. I tried restarting it but there was just rubbish all over the screen.

56-reg Blue Elise is no more. Dead as a doornail. Completely ka-put. FUBAR. It is an ex Elise. It has bits missing. Lots of bits.

The police say - after looking at the scene and the tyre marks - that I wasn't speeding and that two independant witnesses say it was his fault. What happened was that the Mazda in front of me, on a dual carriageway, pulled into the left lane and in behind a pair of white vans. So I started to accelerate to pass him, and the two white vans. Then he decided he didn't want to be behinda a white van any more, and veered quite sharply, without indication or any other warning, right into my path. I was making tyre marks on the road before the Elise hit his OSR quarter. The impact punched in the side wall of my NSF tyre, giving me greatly reduced control over the car. His car span to one side and collided with a lamp post, finding its resting place facing the oncoming traffic. The lamp post fell across the other side of the dual carriageway, hitting a car and another white van in the windscreen. Meanwhile, I was careering down the road just barely managing to keep it fairly straight. The two white vans had slowed down quite a lot, having seen the incident unfold, and I firstly grazed the OSR of the front one, losing enough speed to fall behind, then took a trip underneath the compressor trailer he had behind him as he slammed his brakes on. That pulled the NSF of the car down onto the road even more, causing it to steer into the crash barrier where the Elise finally stopped. Then I hopped out and went over to the other car, asking the driver if he'd even seen me. He was convinced he'd actually been travelling in the opposite direction - so I left that to the police.

The good news is the company dealing with the claim and the lease car sent me a brand new 08-reg Red Elise with 2000 miles on the clock by 6pm :D

The 08 model has more leather inside, and loads of sound-proofing so you can actually hear the radio at speeds over 70. It comes with a soft-top and appears to not have the capacity for a hard-top at all, though the top it's got doesn't seem to make it much noisier. There is a warning on the inside of the roof that some water might get in during particularly bad weather. This car is a good 300Kg heavier than its predecessor. I'm not sure yet how that affects the efficiency or acceleration, but I expect it must. All in all, though, it feels more "modern" and more "refined." It feels like it's "grown up." The suspension seems to be more forgiving, meaning that speedbumps which would usually give you serious arse-ache at 20 can now be taken at 40 with ease. The extra weight makes it feel much more grounded and much more solid. And the traction control is much more gentle. The old model would hammer you back into a straight line, while this one tickles you with a feather. There's also 3 shift lights which switch on one at a time, then flash when it's time to change, unlike the original 1 which didn't give you much indication other than the fact that changing should happen some time soon. So generally it's good. Unfortunately it does have more inertia which makes the back end feel more likely to step out, but the traction control will take care of that. It's also not as "twitchy" as the other model, again due to the extra weight. So possibly easier to drive, but quite probably a bit less fun. Mind you, for an every day driver you'd want the 08 over the 56.