Lotus Driving Academy today - good news

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The videos suggested the one with the stripes was shadow grey from what I recall.
I agree with that. Looks to be Shadow Grey. Maybe with full black pack? Hard to tell from inside.

1659147846774.png
 

Scruff111S

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Yellow car footage seems to be stock footage from Lotus... saw another recent review that did the same with a blue Emira. Porsche does the same thing supplying exterior footage and the reviewers splice in their interior footage. It's cheesy when they are complete different cars, but when they match... it works.
The problem with Yellow, and I chose Ferrari Yellow for my Caterham, is that every fly in a 10 mile radius knows where your car is and comes along to completely cover it. Believe me, it doesn't make any car look good.
 

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Great video...can anyone release it dubbed in english?
Switch on captions (CC button), and settings (cog wheel) to English auto-translate.... It has a reasonable stab but a couple of comedy moments too in the translation... ;)
 
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Chris2409

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Sounds great guys! We’re there any specific skills that you asked the instructors to cover? How many people were on the day per instructor? I’ve got my session on coming up and can’t wait!
 

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Some more notes on the cars.

We only had three cars on standby for use during the day, a DV, seneca and nimbus car. As the DV and nimbus were out on track pretty constantly all day, I didn't get too thorough of a look through the cars but I did sit in and have a look around the seneca LDA car for a little while with Andrew and then Ian (not on the forum).

The seneca car had some quality control issues that I noticed. None of the cars had floor mats and the carpet in them wasn't buckled in I don't think. The studs for attaching the floor mats were clearly missing as were some up to the front of the footwell. The pedals looked good but for some reason, only 2 of the three pedals (and this was true on the nimbus car too) had rubber strips on them, bit odd. The floor/shelf behind the seats was loose and not sitting correctly, I guess someone had pulled it up and not put it back correctly?

Moving to the outside of the car. The gloss black surround of the airduct in front of the rear wheel arch, on one side of the seneca car was bubbling, as if it had some film on that wasn't set right. The silver tips on the exhaust were covered in soot and certainly on the inside at least, looked a lot more like the black pack version of the tips, seems they get very dirty easily. And then there's the bonnet strip. One one side of the seneca car, it had a square profile and slightly protruded the bonnet panel. On the opposite side it was only half of the square profile and was tucked under the bonnet panel. Perhaps they got to the end of the roll? The asymmetry bugged me.

One thing I hadn't noticed before is that through the rear wheels, you can see quite a lot of the suspension mechanics which I liked. You can also see through the bonnet vents into the radiator and fan at the front of the car. There's nothing but a small lip there so perhaps bits of debris falling from trees might end up in there, I hope not.

This may be controversial, but I didn't like the dark verdant. Multiple times in the day (which went from overcast to sunny to overcast) I looked at the dark verdant car and couldn't decide if it was grey or green. While overcast you really had to go up close to look at it to realise it was green. It was only when they brought over a shadow grey car that I could clearly see side by side they were different colours, but both looked grey with the clouds in the sky. Shadow is a slightly bluer grey and verdant came across as a slightly green grey. I toyed with getting a DV car but I'm glad I stuck with my guns and went with the seneca.

Some minor details I found out during the day (is it coming across that I do a lot of analysis as a day job yet? /pedantry?). The gear knob is smaller than I'm used to and being aluminium and right next to the vents, gets very cold to the touch as the air con blows over it, not a bad thing but something I noticed.
There are some options in the infotainment/settings that allow you to choose whether to fold the mirrors when you lock the car and there's also an option to have them tilt down when you enter reverse. The reversing camera gives you an orange box which twists as you rotate that steering wheel, rather than being static as I've seen in some other cars.
The infotainment systems all had a 4g signal and bluetooth signal on them on the left hand side, yet no phones connected. Does this indicate they have their own sim card? Or was it a software bug?

Anyway, got to dash again, I'll post some more about the driving aspects of the car and comparison with my Mustang if I get some time later!
 

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Great info Joel very much appreciated.

I have only had one big moanarama since sitting in the seneca 'model' (electric exhibition mule thing) at JCB666 in Bradford.

The Seats were absolutely without doubt THE worst seat I have ever had the misfortune to sit in. even MGF seats were better and anyone whoever sat in one will empathise.
I got a great email back from Scott Walker months ago saying those are just for show not at all like the finished article.
The German gent looks like hes sat way too high (maybe hes 7' tall???)
Still tense about being sat on it not in it.
I have 3 loti and one does sit 'IN' all of them.
I'm obviously a seat weirdo as my Kia Stinger GTS seats were way better than the 18 way things in the Taycan!!!
Can any of you track experience guys comment????

ta

Simon
 

Kammi

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Hy Simon,
he said before boarding that he is two meters tall

regards
 

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I don't think we were sat in totally production ready seats, I didn't see the three stripes for example.

I think the seats are going to be very personal as to whether you do or don't get on with them. I felt comfortable and secure in them while throwing the car around the track and they were certainly had enough movement and were low enough in the car for me (175cm, 5'9") to get a good driving position.

I think time will tell and some longer drives might reveal whether they truly are comfortable or not, but, for me at least, I thought they were good and certainly an improvement on the awful seats in my Mustang!
 

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settings that allow you to choose whether to fold the mirrors when you lock the car and there's also an option to have them tilt down when you enter reverse.

Was there an option to fold the mirrors in while the car is running? I want to be able to fold mine in while backing into my garage.
 

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Was there an option to fold the mirrors in while the car is running? I want to be able to fold mine in while backing into my garage.
It wasn't in the settings but this is a standard feature on most cars so I'd expect so. There's a small dial on the drivers door for controlling the mirrors, normally you either push this towards the front of the car or twist it 180 degrees to fold the mirrors when you want to do it ad-hoc
 

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I don't think we were sat in totally production ready seats, I didn't see the three stripes for example.

I think the seats are going to be very personal as to whether you do or don't get on with them. I felt comfortable and secure in them while throwing the car around the track and they were certainly had enough movement and were low enough in the car for me (175cm, 5'9") to get a good driving position.

I think time will tell and some longer drives might reveal whether they truly are comfortable or not, but, for me at least, I thought they were good and certainly an improvement on the awful seats in my Mustang!
Sometimes it’s good to be average 175cm tall 😀
 

Joel

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Was there an option to fold the mirrors in while the car is running? I want to be able to fold mine in while backing into my garage.
Just did a quick Google, on Volvo's you press the L and R buttons simultaneously for a second and that folds or unfolds the mirrors. I suspect it will be the same in the Emira given the switches look to be identical to the volvo ones
 

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Just did a quick Google, on Volvo's you press the L and R buttons simultaneously for a second and that folds or unfolds the mirrors. I suspect it will be the same in the Emira given the switches look to be identical to the volvo ones

Excellent!

Wish there was a Lotus Driving Academy here in the US. All this positive feedback is making me excited for the Emira again.
 

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VL3X

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There are 3 in the US. Currently running Evoras - not sure when they’ll be getting Emiras.


I'm aware. All 3 options are extremely overpriced and also require a flight and hotel based on my home location.

For example...

Screenshot_20220730-124836_Chrome.jpg


$1500 + another $300 of you want a manual transmission. And it's ~ 3 hours. 🙄

How much is the Hethel experience?
 

TomE

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I'm aware. All 3 options are extremely overpriced and also require a flight and hotel based on my home location.

For example...

View attachment 7804

$1500 + another $300 of you want a manual transmission. And it's ~ 3 hours. 🙄

How much is the Hethel experience?
£180 for the taster (about 20-30 mins on track), £720 for intermediate and £960 for advanced. Probably cheaper for you to fly to Hethel and do it there :)
 

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