Lotus Elan Therapy
Since my wife died in 2007, I have needed solace and perhaps some therapy. But I have developed my own. It is called elanism. This therapy is unique in that it treats both the body and mind in many different ways. The various methods are described in alphabetical order.
Better Sleep
Getting out in your Elan and driving round the lanes is a relaxing business. You will certainly sleep better that night with a smile on your face.
Cancer Risk Reduction
It is well known that good vitamin D levels may reduce cancer. Read this on Cancer Research UK. What you need is casual exposure to the sun and Lotus Elans make this very easy, as you can raise and lower the hood much faster than those modern cars with automatic electric hoods. So you need to get out of the car, but then this exercise is good for you.
Drive every day for thirty minutes with the hood down and you might reduce your chance of getting cancer.
Colour Therapy
This is another complete load of bollocks. Buy an Elan in yellow, red, blue or whatever takes your fancy. It’ll give you more fun. If you have a serious problem, buy two or even three!
Enhanced Self Esteem
Lotus Elans are in a very small group of cars, that can be taken anywhere and get total respect. We parked our first Elan at Deauville Racehorse Sales next to a Ferrari Testarossa. All the French kids were looking at the Lotus, as they thought the Ferrari was a complete show off and the property of a total tosser. They were right.
Elans are also the only affordable car, with the possible exception of a mint Morris Minor, that you can turn up in at a three-star Michelin restaurant and will get you total respect. Even if it is totally filthy.
Feel Younger
Ask someone who doesn’t know about cars how old your Elan is and they will say that it is perhaps five or six years old. As you might have owned the car for a lot longer this means you feel younger if you do his maths rather than those you know are correct.
G-Force Massage
G-Force massage is a form of passive massage, that has many of the benefits of traditional massage but without the expence of using a practioner or therapist. You just need to find a suitable road like the A68 or some of those in the Fens and drive the car fast round corners and up and down hills. Note that the latter is difficult in the Fens, but they have lots of wonderful and dangerous corners. Note that you should avoid the Fens if you can’t swim.
G-Force massage has been shown to increase blood flow and adrenaline levels, which contribute to general well-being. It may also reduce blood pressure, as mine was higher a few years ago and has now reduced to a respectable 120/70.
Improved Eye Sight
Driving an Elan fast means that you have to look out for the Fuzz! So your eye-sight has to get better!
Improved Sex Life
It is a well-known fact that people and it’s not just women, are turned on by being driven fast in an open-top car. This effect is also enhanced in Lotus Elans, where the superb aerodynamic design means that you don’t get your hair in a mess. This advantage is not of course enjoyed by the follically challenged.
Lotus Elans have one problem though. Sex is almost impossible in an Elan. On the other hand, the rear spoiler is an ideal hand-hold for position 36.
Increased Muscular Coordination
As we get older, you tend to lose muscular coordination. Lotus Elans are the ideal vehicle for keeping your motor skills up to date.
Make People Smile
Drive past someone in the street in an Elan and you get looked at. People smile. It is our duty to make as many other people happy every day as we can. It’s easy in an Elan.
New Friends
Elans tend to congregate in friendly groups. So you make new friends, which helps the lonely. There is a slight problem with this in that you can sometimes suffer from elanborism. But hopefully others into elanism will help you guard against this.
Reduce Environmental Guilt
Many people these days suffer from environmental guilt, brought about by feelings that you are not doing enough to save the planet. Lotus Elans reduce this feeling, as they last forever, give very good fuel economy for their performance and over their lifetime probably create less carbon dioxide than a modern car.
Conclusion
This is just a start and if you have any other benefits of elanism, please post.
A Period Mobile Phone
Is my Elan, one of the few with an original early-1990’s analogue mobile phone?
A Period Panasonic Mobile Phone
Note the Sony radio, which is the only non-original equipment in the car. As I’ve still got the original Binatone from the car, perhaps if someone wants an early 1990’s original Elan for a film, then this is the car.
The Mobile Phone Aerial
The mobile phone aerial is just a little spike on the windscreen. It is actually glued on both sides, so there is no hole in the windscreen.
Scrubbing Up the Elan
Yesterday, I got the Jaguar cleaned at the hand car wash at the corner of Huntingdon and Histon Roads in Cambridge. They did a good job, so this morning I took the Elan there to remove all of the winter dirt.
Washing the Lotus Elan
At least now I can see backwards in the mirrors! They even put the headlights up and cleaned them too! All for eight quid!
The Elan Back Home
I doubt it will stay this clean for long, as I’m off to Brands Hatch tomorrow and hopefully on to the Continent for a few days later in the week. At least I’ll start clean!
Left and Right, Up and Down
Of all the roads in England, few are as notorious for a good burn-up as the A68, that runs from the Scottish Border to Darlington. It’s up and over a blind summit, then fast left, fast right or possibly both. In places you can see the road stretching several kilometres in the distance.
Yesterday, as I returned from Scotland, the road was pretty empty except for a couple of wagons and a few cars, so it was great fun. And safe too, as if you drive the road properly in good visibility and fairly dry conditions, you have no problems unless you take some of the blind summits too fast.
As I said in the related post on Taking the High Road, it’s the sort of road for which Elans were built!
I have rather an affection for the A68 as several times I drove it on the way to see the first Metier customer, Ferranti, in Edinburgh. In those days though, it wasn’t in an Elan. But there weren’t any speed cameras!
Taking the High Road
I got up early on Sunday morning and by half-past-seven, I was on the road to see an old friend near Peebles in the Scottish Borders.
First stop was Wetherby Services on the A1(M), just north of York and Leeds. So the petrol was it’s usual expensive price, but the service area seemed better than most. Perhaps it was just a mirage as service areas in the UK, tend to be very poor, tired, of bad design and serving the same crap food. At least Wetherby had a Marks and Spencer, so if I had wanted to buy some decent food, then I could have done.
I should say here, that I never stop unless I absolutely have to in a motorway service area, that does not have either an M&S or a Waitrose.
I took the A1 or A1(M) all the way to Newcastle and past the Angel of the North before taking the A696 through Ponteland and towards Scotland. Things must be getting more civilised up in the North East, as I noticed that Ponteland has a Waitrose, which until a few years ago was restricted very much to the South.
The A696 and A68 route from Newcastle to Edinburgh is one of those roads that needs driving. It also needs a nimble car with lots of acceleration. In other words it’s a road fit for a Lotus.
I didn’t hang about on a road that was almost free of traffic with snow to both sides and a good bit of mist. But the smooth trip to Peebles was interrupted by bridge works at Jedburgh, which meant that I had to take a detour via Hawick and Selkirk.
The latter did slow the Lotus, but I still arrived in time for lunch in Peebles.
A Toupee for My Elan
I call it a toupee, but it’s just a very small cover from Classic Additions.
As you can see it could have been made for the Elan. It is a very good fit.
It was also very good value at £42 complete with a little bag to keep it in.
The only problem is that I have an old mobile phone aerial on the windscreen and this will probably poke through. I could remove the aerial but I do like the non-working period detail of an analogue phone. It’s hands-free to!
Do Elans Fade Away?
I took this picture of my Elan and a much later Elise. Both are in the same Norfolk Mustard.
A Yellow Elan and a Yellow Elise
Note how the colour is exactly the same and that my Elan has not faded in any way. Speaking to the guy who services my car, he said that yellows hardly seem to fade. I think it’s the pigment.
Dancing with Hippopotami
I have just returned from Cornwall. It was an easy drive in the Lotus, but it was made fraught because of the other clowns on the road and the fact that my new Sony radio failed. I suspect that it’s just a fuse, but the original radio lasted sixteen years.
I left Polzeath dead on eleven this morning and instead of taking the Wadebridge and Bodmin route to the A30, I went via Camelford and picked the main road up at Launceston. Now the 0-60 time for a Lotus Elan SE is 6.7 seconds. That sounds a bit slow compared to Bugatti Veyron at 2.7 seconds, but those between six and seven seconds include a lot of fast machinery. See TorqueStats for more details. But because the handling is so precise and the engine has a wide torque curve, an Elan can overtake where much faster cars struggle. Certainly on the B-road to Camelford and on to Launceston, I overtook upwards of twenty vehicles with ease.
What struck me on that road was the numbers of 4x4s loaded to the gunnells. Not to be content with filling the inside with junk, they often had a large pack on the roof. Now I know some people like to travel with the kitchen sink, but what you take tends to fit the space available. I can remember that the when the children were small we could fit all three in the back of a Porsche 911 and get everything we needed in the boot. Perhaps, we were poor and couldn’t afford all wheel drive push chairs.
Everything went well until a few miles after Exeter, when the radio failed. This was particularly disappointing as I have since found out that my third least favourite team (Leeds United) has beaten my second least favourite (Manchester United).
And then we had the first delay of an hour.
Some prat in a Jeep decided to run into the back of someone else in the outside lane of the motorway. Two other cars then joined the accident. I don’t know whether the Jeep was overloaded but there was obviously some misjudgement somewhere. Perhaps the driver didn’t realise that his car didn’t brake as well as the hot hatch he ran into the back of. I should also say that when I break hard in the Lotus, I watch both ends so I don’t get shunted up the arse.
And then a few miles further on, another 4×4 turned over and cost me another half-an-hour. I hope it didn’t cost anybody their life, as the Air Ambulance had landed in the field.
But perhaps we should ensure that they don’t travel at excessive speeds in the outside lane of the motorway, with drivers who are not competent to handle them at that weight and that speed.
I have been looking too at the specifications for a major manufacturer of roof boxes. I can’t find any warnings about how they will affect the handling and the maximum weight they can carry seems quite low. Perhaps the latter is correct, but how many overload them. I certainly wouldn’t put one on my Jaguar X-Type Estate.
Once past the last accident, I had no real problems and pushed on past Swindon, Oxford, Brackley, Northampton, Huntingdon and Cambridge. This may seem a long way to go, but it does avoid the M25 and all the roadworks.
I’d have done the journey under six hours but for the accidents!
At one point I followed a real car of a plonker; the BMW X6. Don’t just take my view on this, but read what Jeremy Clarkson has to say. He was a lot more scathing on Top Gear. Perhaps The Times needs the advertising and the BBC doesn’t.
But then I followed a Jaguar XF. I could hold it, but only just. When they produce an estate version, I’ll look at the Jag.
But I’ll still keep the Lotus.
Two Original Elan Key Fobs and a Tool Kit
I belong to a forum on Lotus Elan Central, where we talk about Lotus Elans, as you might expect.
Someone mentioned getting a new key fob for Christmas. Here are my two.
Two Lotus Elan Key Fobs
Note that the one on the right has hardly been used and the badge has not shown any sign of wear, unlike the one on the left.
Here’s the toolkit for good measure.
A Pristine Lotus Elan Tool Kit
This has never been used. There is no rust at all.
But I do feel cheated in that some tool kits have a pen knife.
An Unusual Car Number Plate
I was in Cambridge yesterday and I saw one of the world’s worst cars, a Bentley something, with the number plate HAS 2 NOB. It is in fact HA5, but then the banker who owned it had made the plate illegal with unapproved spacing.
The main reason I call the Bentley one of the world’s worst cars, is that it only does about seventeen miles to the gallon. For lots of reasons, such as climate change and saving fossil fuels for future generations, cars that cannot do more than forty miles to the gallon should not be manufactured.
Now if you think this is jealousy, you couldn’t be further from the truth. If I wanted a Bentley, I could definitely afford one, but I certainly wouldn’t be seen dead in one!
I’ll stick to my Lotus, which incidentally weighs only forty percent of the Bentley. Just as in people, being obese is not a good thing.
I think it would be interesting to see how which car to lap Nurburgring fastest in the hands of the owner.
The Anonymous Widower 