I've not posted on here properly for a long time but I thought it was about time I explained all the recent activity in the Classifieds section so here is the story:
In 1991 a sixteen year old me went into John Menzies in Paisley and bought the book 'Lotus Esprit Turbo' by John Simister. I was obsessed with the car and read the book from cover to cover many times vowing that one day that I would own one. In 2005 I was finally in the position to buy one but decided to go for the 'sensible' option and bought the first of two S2 111s Elises from Murrays. I had my Storm Titanium Elise for about 10 months when I traded it in for another S2 111s Elise, this time a one-off car with a very special paint job. I had this car up until last month when I spoke to Craig and Brandon about the possibility of selling the car back to them with the plan being that I would finally scratch my Esprit itch. I had tried and failed to do this about four years ago, agreeing to trade my Elise for a V8 Esprit from a dealer in Reading which thankfully I had the sense to walk away from.
With Craig and Brandon's offer in mind I went Esprit hunting. Having had my fingers burnt with the V8 previously I decided to revisit my now twenty three year old vow and found a 1989 Esprit Turbo SE for sale on Autotrader. The car was just what I was after, Calypso Red with Black Leather and red stitching. It had just undergone a full respray (fully documented) and had also just had a big service. The deal was done, my Elise went back to Murrays and I found myself the new (3rd) owner of F28RAR.
I have had the car for nearly three weeks now and all I can really say is its completely different to the Elise. Despite it being 25 years old it is still a very quick car even by modern standards. Its a pig to park due to lack of power assistance yet when you have it flowing along a B road it is a joy to drive as it does not crash and bang like the Elise. The cabin is perhaps the most dated part of the design and Dom Shanahan will testify its certainly not the most ergonomic place to be if you are over 6ft tall however I'm 5ft 5" and it fits me just fine. All in all I'm really glad I finally took the plunge and my hope is it will actually get some use compared to the Elise which had dropped to around 1000 miles a year for the past couple of years.
Cheers,
John
