Remember TTAC’s Future Writers Week? You chose the writers. The writers wrote. The stories are in (well, most of them …). Here is the first one. Do you like it? Tell us. The stories will be published in the sequence in which they arrived in TTAC’s mailbox.

I thought I was hard-core. People who complain about the Lotus Elise’s lack of creature comforts or suspension compliance are wimps I thought. Many of us would agree that pure driving pleasure outweighs most other considerations. The Elise is the ultimate test of this idea.  Buy or by the hour? Let’s do the test. Read More >

They say that “Less is more”, whoever they are. The Lotus Elise would seem to be a reasonable proof of that statement. Most of the Elises sold in the United Kingdom are 134-horsepower models powered by the same Toyota engine which, bolted to a base (in all senses of the word) Pontiac Vibe, permits America’s daytime strippers to make their late-morning commutes without mechanical incident. From what I’ve read, the base Elise is a stimulating, wonderfully balanced sporting car that permits man and machine to operate in perfect “B-road” harmony.

Driving a go-kart is something of an acquired taste. You sit on a dinner tray, a few inches off the ground. You get a steering wheel, an engine, four tiny tyres, rudimentary suspension and… that's it. At speed, the forces of acceleration, de-acceleration and lateral G's are unfiltered, and vicious. Nannies have been jailed for shaking babies less violently. But if you love to drive, a go-kart unleashes a flood of adrenalin-crazed endorphins that makes it hurt so good. After haring around in a go-kart, driving a 'normal' car feels like, um, nothing.

I'm sorry, did I say go-kart? I meant to say 'Lotus Elise'. Read the above paragraph again, substituting the word 'Elise' for 'go-kart'. The differences between the two are both obvious and unimportant: size, doors, roof, gearbox and top end. The similarities are startling. Ride height low enough to scare a limbo dancer. A tiny engine with a narrow but brutally effective power band. Steering and suspension so direct you wonder where the machine ends and your nervous system begins. Put it all together, and you've got a road car that you can drive like a go-kart, using your entire body to aim the machine with zero-delay, laser-guided precision.