Gigolo Jason

TVR's are nice, but they have never been offered in North American and most Americans don't even know they exist.

Ike

I also fail to see what it has to do with an Elise, besides the fact that they are made in the same country. Awesome cars, but certainly not in the same category as the Elise.

Ned M

iTrader: (2)

I only have room in my heart for one maintenance headache at a time.

shelleys_man_06

How about a Series II Lotus Elise powered by the 280 hp 13B-REW or the 247 hp 13B-MSP?

PoorCollegeKid

If you could somehow mate those engines up to a transversely mounted transmission and find enough space in the engine bay for the 13B-REW's turbos, I think that you'd have one beast of a car on your hands.

DOMINION

Hey that TVR have a straight 6 right?. Seen one in that movie "Swordfish" and in GT for PS2. Me likes it.

ALMOST8IT

Cool, the nearest lotus dealer to us was in AZ or CA. I hope I see these out and about.

RobDickinson

Yep the TVR tuscan usses TVR's own straight 6, as every other current TVR uses.

Shame they've had real realiability problems with them, due too poor substandard 3rd party supplied components prety much every straight 6 from 99-02 will need a rebuild.

Love the tuscan, but I'd probbaly go for one of the older v8's

Neither will be coming to the US tho because of emmisions laws.

As for the elise - as I said someone (in Germany) already has a 13b powered S1. And I'm sure theres more than 1.

DOMINION

Sup ALMOST8IT?
You going to the sushi meet?

CLICKY!

ALMOST8IT

Can't make it tonight, I have to pick my sister and brother in law up at the airport, they are in for the holiday. I heard that the sushi buffet is excellent, hopefully those that go can confirm this.

I hope to make it next time.

Thanks

Haris

Lotus Elise is pretty good, but if 2 200 lbs. guys sat in there, the car would slow down a lot. Haha. That engine is good for that weight, once you put something heavier, a civic will pass you by.

lol, jk.

Anyways, this elise is good, but too expensive. They should have made it at $30K, but it probably would steal all 350z sales. Maybe even few RX8s.

DOMINION

Lotus Elise starts off cheap.

Hanzo

What if you have two 200 lbs. guys sat in the civic too? It is all relative.

PoorCollegeKid

The manufacturing techniques that they use to keep the Elise's weight under 2000lbs is what drives the price up to $40k. If they used standard techniques and a normal frame, the car could cost ~$30k, but would either weigh in a few hundred pounds more or would sacrifice a lot of chassis rigidity, either of which would probably strip the Elise of its title as the best handling car in the world.

Baller

best handling car in the world is correct.

babylou

I have a paper published by MIT discussing performance and cost comparisons between body-in-white manufacturing techniques. Believe it or not the extruded aluminum/castings/bonding/riveted method used by Lotus is lowest cost for low production quantities. Only until production reaches 50,000 units per year is the steel unibody lower cost. The reason is the stamping dies for a steel unibody are very expensive.

PoorCollegeKid

Did the production costs include price of materials used, or just the actual cost of production? If it includes the price of the more-expensive aluminum, then I retract my previous statement. Low volume probably contributes quite a bit to the added cost (as engineering and research costs are spread between a very small number of vehicles), but I was under the impression that the rather unique aluminum frame was the reason for the price increase. I know that Chevy was looking at putting out an aluminum-framed Corvette but that would drive the price up higher than they wanted it to, so they scrapped the idea for the C6 and, supposedly, the C6 Z06.

Edit: Here, I believe, is the report mentioned above. It does not address the Elise or Lotus in particular, but rather steel vs. aluminum vs. composites for use in body frames in general. A certain technique for producing aluminum bodies for cars is more cost effective than steel for low volume (see page 19 of the report), but for higher volume cars, the lower production costs of steel bodies after the initial investment makes steel the cheapest way to go. This is why Chevy, which produces many, many Corvettes every generation, was reluctant to make a large number of aluminum-bodied Corvettes. Stamping and die casting are both relatively expensive ways to shape aluminum, but extrusion is apparently a very cheap method. Looks like my previous assumption was wrong, after all. Thanks to babylou for pointing out my error.

babylou

Watch out now. Typically on this site I am branded an a-hole. Good find on the MIT paper. Since you're a "PoorCollegeKid" and live in Cambridge, MA I'm guessing you're an MIT student? Maybe that's how you found the paper?

PoorCollegeKid

An a-hole, eh? If you correct most people the way that you corrected me, it sounds like some people just have ego problems. I can admit it when I'm wrong (God knows it happens often enough) and I'm always happy to learn something new. As for finding the paper, I just went to MIT's website and searched for the paper, so although I am a student there, it had little to do with finding the source you referenced. The knowledge that pretty much everything that has had anything to do with the Institute since the late '80s is on that website somewhere did lead me there, though...

Gigolo Jason

Just picked her up tonight, great car.

MrH

Woah, you did? Pictures!!! I demand pictures!!! :-)

Gigolo Jason

I will post them soon. There will probably also be pictures of it at the next Houston Club meeting.

MrH

I'll anoxiously awaiting. What color did you get? Sport or Luxury package?

So now you have an RX-7 and an Elise? Talk about a kick *** garage.

RX8_008

Its much faster than the 8 in almost all areas.

Ike

There's no almost about it, the 8 doesn't compare in any performance category to the Elise. And yes... pics would be nice