Piston Slap: The Geographic Luxury of Bespoke Motorcar Ownership?

TTAC Commentator arach writes:

Sajeev,

I need some car buying advice, and I’m not like one of those lame buyers who ask if they should buy a Honda or a Toyota, so you should definitely give me your 30 seconds of direction. (Fine, maybe this isn’t pointless. – SM)

You see, I finally bought my DREAM car two years ago, a Ferrari 360 Spyder. I love it — BUT there’s two things I hate about it:

1. Despite just living in the US of A, there’s no dealership or shop anywhere around me that can service it.

I was thinking about selling it and buying something else, like a Lotus Evora 400 or a Porsche 911, but the latter seems too common.

Sajeev responds:

Question back to you: is a Lotus really any better? I assume not everything nothing Lotus can be serviced at a Toyota dealer; that’s one reason why they have a Lotus dealer network.

You have way too much faith in the parts/technology sharing of Lotus and Toyota. My knowledge of the 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII and that engine stealing bastard (a.k.a. 1996 Ford Mustang Cobra) in mind, I bet the Evora’s camshafts are also bespoke Lotus bits. I’m likely correct.

This is turning into a good Piston Slap!

arach:

That is a great question. I presume since it’s Toyota-based that an independent shop can work on them, but I falsely assumed the same about Ferrari. I live where indy shops have no problem with Porsche. There is a Maserati and Jaguar dealer nearby, while BMW, Porsche, and mainstream dealers are in reach. I was hoping for something that can be serviced at indy shops.

I called some indy shops before I bought it who “claim” they can work on them, but does Lotus lock down buyers to the dealer network?

Sajeev:

I bet Lotus locks ’em down hard: even John Deere does it.

arach:

So I made the post up at Lotustalk.com, I got nothing that gave me a ton of confidence, and it appears some Lotus dealerships may not be as wonderful as one might hope. I decided to dig into the Lotus computer systems. Hoping it was a Toyota based ECU, I did find out they are proprietary Lotus units.

Thanks for guiding me in the right direction, even if I didn’t find the result I wanted!

Any other ideas, or does this lead towards the mundane choices — a run-of-the-mill 911 or a Corvette? Any other ideas of cars worth looking into? Nobles emerge occasionally!

Noble? NOBLE?

Son, how many times does it take you touching the waffle iron before you learn it burns?

Go buy a Vette, a 911, a GT350 Mustang (with all the track-focused options) or maybe wait for the new Supra. Because you don’t have the geographic luxury of buying bespoke, premium sports cars!

[Image: Lotus]