My Dad has always given me good advice. But when it comes to cars, we have disagreed for years. He isn’t a huge car fan. His attitude to cars is simple – if it gets you from A to B and its cheap to run, you’ve got a good deal. I’m not sure where my passion for cars comes from. Certainly not from my mother. To her, anything that is red is a Ferrari. Simple. Ask her what car she and my dad own, and she’ll tell you emphatically that it’s white.

As you can imagine, my dad’s advice to me was always simple. “Son”, he’d tell me, “get yourself something small. You don’t need aircon, you don’t need leather seats, you don’t need climate control, you don’t need a radio, you don’t need power steering, you don’t need a V6 engine, you don’t need any of that stuff!”

10 years later, I think I may have found the car that my Dad was talking about. Its small, simple, and it doesn’t have any of that fancy stuff – no aircon, no leather, no radio, no power steering. But it’s as quick as a bailout in a recession.

I’m talking about the Lotus Elise 111R. It feels like a go-cart crafted by some enthusiast in a shed somewhere in England. It has a stiff, a very stiff, suspension that makes driving over pot holes feel like you’re driving down a flight of stairs. But of course, you’re not supposed to be driving over pot
holes. You should stick to mountain passes. Or a race track.

We took the Lotus over Red Hill in Simons Town. Repeatedly. It was magnificent. The 1,8-litre Toyota ZZ engine produces 141 kW, which at first I thought was crazy for a car that only weighs 860 kilograms. But, as it turns out, I think it’s the perfect amount of power. Enough to make you go really fast, but not enough to really lose it in the corners.

With such a low ride and stiff suspension corners are handled with pleasure. Only once did I detect a bit of understeer.
And the Elise has a little party piece, something it brings out, that surprises you, scares you, and then makes you smile. That engine revs all the way up to 9 000 rpm, which makes getting from standstill to 100 km/h in 4.9 seconds really easy – it’s all done in first gear! What I really didn’t expect is the burst of power at 6 500 rpm that leaves your spleen hanging onto the bumper.

So, in a straight line, you can get to 100 km/h in first, 200 km/h in 3rd, and you still have 3 of the 6 gears left! Now of course I would never go that fast, so let’s just say it’s all theoretical. And my dad would just never understand why you need to get from point A to point B that quickly.

Around corners, the Elise is just insane. I didn’t change down for most corners, I just didn’t change up between them! Staying in second gear with the revs at about 5 000 rpm means I can go into a corner at speed, hold it through the corner and then as I come out of the corner that magic piece of power at 6 500 rpm jumps out and scares the crap out of me as I go hurtling towards the next corner.

Fortunately I didn’t have to drive it in traffic. I picked it up, got in and put my foot down all the way to Red Hill. But once we were done on the mountain, we did drive through some civilized areas. People stop and stare. It’s a special-looking little car and most people haven’t seen one. Also, it’s really low, and you hope other cars notice you. An SUV feels like it could ride over you, like an oversized speed bump.

It’s not the sort of car you want to drive in the rush-hour commute. But it certainly is the sort of car you want to drive every weekend.