Danville Street Sighting - 2005 Lotus Elise

We're on the final countdown to Christmas which means only a few dozen more times having Mariah Carey forced upon you, and a few more installments of "All I Want For Christmas Is 'U'". By now you know the drill: car brands with the letter U in their name. Buick, Datsun, Peugeot, Austin-Healey, and now Lotus. This is a 2005 Lotus Elise.

We previously looked at a little Bugeye Sprite from the late 1950s. The Lotus Elise is almost a spiritual successor in the cheap and cheerful sports car formula. Of course, your idea of cheap may vary. But the Elise is a lightweight, simple, relatively affordable platform with excellent handling, a revvy little Toyota 1.8 liter four, six-speed manual gearbox and a removable roof panel for open-air driving. Don't let the pedestrian Corolla origins of the engine fool you. It was tuned by Lotus and in this package, can hit 60 mph in about five seconds.

Finished in classic metallic silver with a handsome red leather interior, this Elise is an interesting departure from the red or yellow I tend to see on these. I tend to avoid featuring modern exotic cars because I don't find something like a Ferrari California to be very interesting for a shoot. This generation of Elise is over 20 years old now and I always had a soft spot for these cars. This could be one of the earliest Elises sold new in America as 2005 was the first model year to be federalized. Dare I say these could be considered classics in the near future? In some states anything over 25 years is eligible for antique license plates. I remember when someone in my neighborhood bought one of these new. I thought that little red Elise with its vanity plate '2000LBS' was so cool. Hard to believe that was nearly two decades ago.

 

Photographed October 2023