Well this coming Friday is Anzac day here in Australia so not only do lots of old people parade up and down George St with their medals being pushed along by their grand childen, and we can legally gamble on the old game of ‘2-up’ in the pubs, it’s also the 1st birthday of my little Blue Lotus Elise R 🙂
It seems to of passed so quick but it was one year ago now that Sanna a me drove down to Rick Damelians who opened up especally to let me come and collect the shiny new Lotus. I remember finding out just 2 days before that it had arived in the country and I would be able to pick up after the final checks were complete. I was so excited it was like Christmas, no wait, it was better than christmas, I felt like a little boy again.
Collection of the car and day 1 of a new Lotus relationship,
I took advantage of the free girl with purchase offer too 🙂
So how have the running costs been day-to-day of running a fun inpractical sports car in the middle of a city. Well kinda ‘practical’ to be totally honest!
Lets look at some of the costs its actally cost me for the year:
Insurance: I insured fully comprehensive (of course) for $120k and with both me and Sanna insured to drive it only came to $1650 with a $750 excess. Now for a car with a replacment value of $120k I was plesently shocked and supprised. Crazyest quote I received was for $6500 so shop around I learned!
Maintenace: So through the year we had one initial post sales service at around 2500km’s which consisted of a oil filter and a fresh set of oil and came to $166, labour was all free. The only un-planned visit back to base was after the trip to Victoria with the Lotus Club and the fact we got lost down that 38km rough muddy logging track (see an older entry for info and photos on that incident), the air filter was clogged full of mud and sand. My fault for getting lost I know, replacement air filter cost only $55! the beauty of a Toyota engined sports car 🙂
Day 365 and still grinning under its present owner.
Petrol: a full tank has seemed to of lasted me a few weekends, seeing as I mostly use the car once a week for a spirited drive through the countryside it seems to use half a tank for each good long heavy throttle session. The tank is 43 litres in size and when pootering around town using low rev’s it just simply seems to use petrol fumes instead of petrol!
Honestly without doing some proper tests I would say Sanna’s Peugeot 205cc and its 2.0 litre engine uses more petrol than my Elises’s little 1.8 litre engine. Of course when on the race track or a hard country lane driving session and your revving the hell out of the engine, which this engine really seems to want to do, the fuel ecomony starts to go South very quickly.
So there you go I did say it seems to of turned out sort of ‘Practical’. So it has supercar levels of performance but you only need a student wage to run the thing, perfect! Bring on year 2 of Lotus ownership 🙂