A little background on the car just to set the tone…
In June 2019 I was just coming out of Giulia QF ownership, which to date I’d say was the best allrounder I’ve ever owned. I had it around 2.5 years and it was amazing. It literally did everything brilliantly and never missed a beat. Had it not been for a really rubbish dealer network (the irony of me moving to Lotus eh!) I’d have probably kept that car long term. The plan on that summers day was to pay visit to my local Porsche dealer who had recently taken delivery of a new 911 GTS. It was a cancelled order where the customer had forfeited around £10k on the deal. Had I actually made it to the original destination I’d not be typing this up now.
As I was leaving for Porsche my mate at Hendy (was Westover) Lotus gave me a buzz and asked if I fancied a drive in a motorsport spec Elise 250 Cup and an Exige 350. With plenty of time left in my afternoon the decision was made to head to Porsche via Poole where Alex was waiting with the keys to my fibreglass undoing.
Keeping it brief, the 250 Cup was brilliant but felt tiny and lacked a bit of grunt on the motorway. There was a lot to love about it but having just stepped out of a 500bhp Italian it was always going to be this way. The Exige didn’t even get driven, I knew it was going to be a more potent version of the Elise. Alex shown me a list of about a dozen 350s sat at Hethel, some with weird run-out specs and parts bin anomalies. A few of these factory fresh 350s were quite appetising but something about the Essex Blue 410 sat behind me in the showroom cried out asking me to talk about the important numbers.
It was £86k in the flesh and being straight off the lorry from Lotus there was a bit of motivation to get it gone and make his month better on the books. Could I really sign up to an £86k bathtub without actually driving it? Hell yeah I could!!
I drove home with my receipt, a brochure and a sweaty forehead,…0 then awaited my wife returning from the school run where I knew she was going to ask a very important question…
You see, the GTS has back seats and we had a 5 year old son at the time. The Exige does not have back seats, which is kind of a deal breaker. You don’t need to know the ins and outs of that conversation but it wasn’t a good one.
The spec:
Essex blue. One of I think 4 cars (410s) painted in this specific mix of Essex Blue.
Carbon seats with a red stitch.
Matt / rubberised hard top.
Blue side intakes.
Silver wheels.
Red calipers, AP J-Hooks.
All the usual 410 carbon goodies.
Nitron 3 way suspension.
Pioneeer stereo.
Carpets.
It was a lovely thing 
The run in was done fairly quickly, mainly shortshifting around Goodwood on an EVO trackday a week after collection lol.
Straight after the first service we fitted a 2bular QP track exhaust and headed to Thruxton. It was a whole lot of fun, fast too… so I booked another date with Opentrack for the end of September 2019. This was even faster and to fast track my progress I took instruction for the 3rd session. On lap 3 of session 4 I stacked it mid corner at 120mph! Game over! My fault entirely, I was running before I could comfortably walk.
My track insurance was a life saver. Moris effectively bought me a new one, writing off the old one on paper within only a couple of weeks. I broke my back (didn’t know this for 8 months) and left wrist and had a load of internal bruising / bleeding but did manage to do Spa with Circuit Days at the beginning of November in a stand-in Clio Cup. Shame to waste a perfectly good booking!
My new 410 arrived from factory a week or so after Spa and this was the spec:
Essex Blue… from the same batch as the first car
Carbon seats with silver stitch
Rubberised hard top and side scoops, not blue this time.
Silver mirrors.
Silver wheels.
Carbon, Nitrons etc etc!
Effectively the same as Mk1 bar a couple of colour options. Oh, and no carpets this time.
So that’s the background. I’ll leave it there for now, check back another day for more and better times in Mk2
