Savage Geese review

[cyanmauve]

What do y’all think?

Overall, I think the review is fairly representative of the car.

I have never driven the competition, so I can’t say anything about how. Cayman/Boxster/GT/GT4 compare.

I do agree that there’s just nothing else like the Emira on the market.

 

[trackday14]

What do y’all think?

Overall, I think the review is fairly representative of the car.

I have never driven the competition, so I can’t say anything about how. Cayman/Boxster/GT/GT4 compare.

I do agree that there’s just nothing else like the Emira on the market.

I agree with the bottom line. I’ve had a GT4 and other Porsches…they never made feel nervous about what new code was going to pop up or waiting for the CEL to come on. My Porsche experiences were always gremlin- and trouble-free. That said, the Porsches did have a major downside: very tall gearing. The gearing made them a less engaging than the Emira for driving on roads. Oh, and the Emira is a million times better looking.

 

[cyanmauve]

I do chuckle a bit whenever people badmouth the reliability of the Emira.

I know, I know, but hear me out.

This car hasn’t been on the streets long enough to comment about long term reliability. We forum members live in an echo chamber of complaints and niggles.

As far as engine reliability and durability, I would be willing to bet our Toyota V6 is heads and shoulders above the higher strung Porsche flat six.

I’m reminded of the 996 IMS issue. Or, if you like domestic beer instead of imports, the 5.4 L Triton powered F150s. It becomes very difficult to figure out exactly how many issues are popping up, and how big of a deal they are on a larger scale.

Long story short, I’m sure Caymans and Boxsters have problems too.

 

[Climber]

I do chuckle a bit whenever people badmouth the reliability of the Emira.

I know, I know, but hear me out.

This car hasn’t been on the streets long enough to comment about long term reliability. We forum members live in an echo chamber of complaints and niggles.

As far as engine reliability and durability, I would be willing to bet our Toyota V6 is heads and shoulders above the higher strung Porsche flat six.

I’m reminded of the 996 IMS issue. Or, if you like domestic beer instead of imports, the 5.4 L Triton powered F150s. It becomes very difficult to figure out exactly how many issues are popping up, and how big of a deal they are on a larger scale.

Long story short, I’m sure Caymans and Boxsters have problems too.

Have had mine 900 care free miles. Not a single issue, except me learning to drive this beautiful machine….

The only real problem with a Emira is all the attention it gets. When you least expect it… Was signing some documents at the title company and a guy in a white Mercedes truck waited for an hour to talk about the car wants to sell his Lexus LS500…
He Never heard of Lotus.
Told him to watch some videos and read some reviews…. Dude was in love..

 

[JAhmed]

They will be doing a comparo video with the 718 GTS in a few months. Should be very interesting.

 

[KJD]

I could take issue with about every third sentence in a very lazy review.

And I’m very bored now with people who can’t be bothered to do their research calling it a “throttle actuator/linkage/valve”.

 

[cyanmauve]

I could take issue with about every third sentence in a very lazy review. [/QUOTE

What do you think the least lazy review or car channel online is?

When I was a kid (born in 1984 for reference) I devoured car magazines. In the United States, the big ones on the newsstand were Road & Track, Car and Driver, Motortrend, and Automobile.

Road & Track was the most enthusiast oriented, with a great blend of data as well as subjective description.

Automobile was very into design, and didn’t seems to care much at all about objective testing.

Car and Driver was like a rowdy, less polished blue collar Road & Track. More American cars, less brand snobbery. But less cool trips to the factories in Stuttgart and Sant’Agata Bolognese.

Motortrend was just kind of, eh. The got really into track testing about the time I stopped reading it.

Anyway, now that car magazines are secondary to the internet for car info, I often think about the information I was lucky to get monthly versus the content I get daily. There’s really only so much objective info about a car to discuss. In a way, the internet has pushed car reviews toward what I used to think of as more British car magazine reviews. Lots and lots of discussion about how a car makes you feel.

 

[Nova]

When I was a kid (born in 1984 for reference) I devoured car magazines. In the United States, the big ones on the newsstand were Road & Track, Car and Driver, Motortrend, and Automobile.

Road & Track was the most enthusiast oriented, with a great blend of data as well as subjective description.

Automobile was very into design, and didn’t seems to care much at all about objective testing.

Car and Driver was like a rowdy, less polished blue collar Road & Track. More American cars, less brand snobbery. But less cool trips to the factories in Stuttgart and Sant’Agata Bolognese.

Motortrend was just kind of, eh. The got really into track testing about the time I stopped reading it.

Anyway, now that car magazines are secondary to the internet for car info, I often think about the information I was lucky to get monthly versus the content I get daily. There’s really only so much objective info about a car to discuss. In a way, the internet has pushed car reviews toward what I used to think of as more British car magazine reviews. Lots and lots of discussion about how a car makes you feel.

Car and Driver in the late 80s and early 90s was the gold standard for me. Humorous and sophisticated writing, didn't take themselves too seriously, and the content was high quality. The other two big ones, Road and Track and Motor Trend positioned themselves to be more numbers/instrumentation focused, at least that was my impression. The article writing was just not as enjoyable to read. Plus I thought that their numbers were sometimes too optimistic.

It made me sad to witness the start of the dying away of Car and Driver as they existed. I remember the exact moment I accepted this. They had hired a new writer/editor and she was pontificating some nonsense about how it was the pinnacle of her automotive enjoyment to go into a curve, set the steering angle, and never having to adjust it for the rest of the curve. These were the days when people read magazines from cover to cover because we literally waited a month before the next issue came out with more content. Even poorly written articles gets read. I scratched my head thinking what automotive enthusiast in their right mind would think that going around a smooth constant radius curve is the pinnacle of driving enjoyment. I don't remember her name, but from that point on, I stopped reading anything with her in the byline.

 

[cyanmauve]

8-10 year old me had the performance stats of many, many cars memorized based on the 2 page table in the back of every Road & Track.

I miss those days!

And yes, I would read those magazines cover to cover multiple times. Once I had exhausted the monthly magazines, I would flip through parts catalogs for my dad’s cars.

 

[JAhmed]

And I’m very bored now with people who can’t be bothered to do their research calling it a “throttle actuator/linkage/valve”.

For the record, he called it “throttle actuator” because that’s what the Lotus PR rep called it when bringing them the car…

 

[Lotus64]

I have never driven the competition, so I can’t say anything about how. Cayman/Boxster/GT/GT4 compare.

They're not competition..... Cool cars but beneath the Emira!! They wish they looked and felt this good.

 

[cyanmauve]

They're not competition..... Cool cars but beneath the Emira!! They wish they looked and felt this good.

Yeah, I know aesthetics are subjective, but man, the Emira is a great looking car. There is a huge amount of value in that for me. I will trade some ultimate performance for looks.

I think it's one of the best looking cars of the last 30 years. Some have criticized it as derivative of McLaren and Ferrari, but there's only so many ways you can style a mid-engine car and meet global crash regulations.

The compactness of the Emira helps the design. Most mid-engine cars look too stretched between the rear door shut line and the rear bumper. The R8 is the best example of this for me.

I think parked next to a Evora, there's familial design language. Also, the Evora GT did not look like a new car, or a car designed in the last 10 years. Mostly because it wasn't designed in the last 10 years! I mean that in the best way. I think they look very cool, and I came close to buying one and cancelling the Emira order while I waited. Part of the reason the Emira looks less like traditional Loti is because there was not a model that bridged the styling gap between the Emira and Evora.

 

[seriously]

Yeah, I know aesthetics are subjective, but man, the Emira is a great looking car. There is a huge amount of value in that for me. I will trade some ultimate performance for looks.

I think it's one of the best looking cars of the last 30 years. Some have criticized it as derivative of McLaren and Ferrari, but there's only so many ways you can style a mid-engine car and meet global crash regulations.

The compactness of the Emira helps the design. Most mid-engine cars look too stretched between the rear door shut line and the rear bumper. The R8 is the best example of this for me.

I think parked next to a Evora, there's familial design language. Also, the Evora GT did not look like a new car, or a car designed in the last 10 years. Mostly because it wasn't designed in the last 10 years! I mean that in the best way. I think they look very cool, and I came close to buying one and cancelling the Emira order while I waited. Part of the reason the Emira looks less like traditional Loti is because there was not a model that bridged the styling gap between the Emira and Evora.

Evora, exige and Elise all share the same kind of design ethos which is more exotic, racy, not "quite" beautiful cars, but more purpose built and appropriate.

The Emira which is of course a reskinned Evora is the first Lotus in a while that just looks like a beautiful sports car. Reminds me more of the Lotus Esprit which was not just a purpose built race car, but a car built to tango with the lambos and Ferraris of its day.

 

[cyanmauve]

The Esprit of nearly any year is a bargain. A first or second generation Esprit is a very undervalued classic.

Great, now I have to head over to BaT to see what S1 and S2 Esprit’s cost…

 

[dgrace]

I finally got around to watching it and thought the review was fair. I was a bit surprised that they made no mention of the seats at all, positive or negative, even in the track segment. That's the kind of info you can't get just by looking at a photo or reading a spec sheet. From a driver perspective, the seats are probably the biggest contrast with the outgoing Evora models to which they compared the Emira in other respects.

 

[cyanmauve]

I am ok with the shape of the seats, generally speaking. They look cool, and fit me reasonably well. The do feel a bit puffy to me, but as they wear I think they will feel better and better.

I do wish I could get the seats 2-3 inches lower. Forward visibility would be improved for me in the position I like to drive in.

I would like to have the Tillett seats, but they ain’t cheap, I think the non-adjustable seat back may be a bit bothersome, and I don’t like getting rid of the side airbag at all.

The Tillett seats probably do hold you in place much better than the stock seats combined with a 4 or 5 point harness, but I don’t want that in a street driven car. The stock side airbag has been engineered to work as a component of a safety system, and I really don’t want to compromise that.