Q: The Corvette comunity isn't like that, they jump all over GM when they think there is a design issue.
I spoke with a colleague of mine who's been campaigning his vets since before MW was born. Both Randy and Robert P know him from SOLO II. He's never experienced the type of pinging that our elise's are showing except at high speeds at tracks like Button Willow and Willow Springs. Says the rubberized bumpers and the non-extended tires in the stock vets on the more modern corvettes he's sure helps reduce the problem. Even at autocross where the speeds might be 70ish at most. Jer's peppering came from autocross only, so there's a difference right there. Not 100-120+ on the tracks where pebbles and sand carry more energy and potential damage.
He said some of his earlier vets had the rubbery material at the rocker panels, and he didn't experience problems there as he recalls.
He is also surprised that our elise is so much inclined to pebble and sand damage from merely riding on the street. I told him, from my own experience, that even with SS, it surely is.
So, Joe, you're not the only Vet vet who would be surprised by the extent of damage you've endured.
However, the next question that he asked me to ask you, that you might expect to hear from your dealer: "Did you really do all this damage merely from normal street wear? Or did you drive at high speeds perhaps not over the cleanest of roads? Or behind another high speed vehicle?"
I think this is beside the point anyway. Had you had those avery shields installed, most if not all of that peppering ahead of your rear wheels wouldn't look like that.
Hey. Another question. What do your panels behind your rear wheels look like now? Anything like Jer's?
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I'm amazed at the number of people here who think Lotus can do no wrong. It's not so much that Lotus can do no wrong, it that we understand what it means to own a Lotus.
It isn't a main stream car. You will put up with quirks that other makes don't have. You will have to wait for back ordered parts and they will be more expensive when you get them. You will have a difficult time finding quality people to work on your Lotus, and when you do, they will be more expensive. Many of us "old timers" tried to explain - before any cars were delivered - that Lotus was different and not to expect things to be like an "ordinary" car. One of the reasons that it took so long to bring the Elise to the US was that Lotus was "afraid" that their standards wouldn't fit well with the average US buyer - in many cases, they were right. But Lotus is also a lot closer to their customers than any other maker. And they make a car that performs like no other.
I bought my Elise knowing full well what to expect in terms of dealer service/availability/reliability, and I bought it in spite of that. I'm actually very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the Elise - it has more than exceeded my expectations.
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I'm amazed at the number of people here who think Lotus can do no wrong.
Please let me digress for a moment. Last month, I was riding on the track with my motorcycle working things other than trying to go fast. Then, in an unexpected way, another rider swerved and hit my front tire while attempting to make a pass on them. I crashed hard, hit my head, wrecked my Ducati, beat up my body and destroyed much of my gear. I am disappointed with the incident. It will end up costing me many dollars for repairs and new gear, missed work, a trip to the emergency room, not being able to think properly for a few weeks and at least a couple of weeks in the garage working on the bike.
After the crash, many people asked me if I wanted to kill the other rider who took me out. Actually, my first reaction was to find the other rider to apologize if I spooked him out there. I could have chosen to not ride that day, to not ride motorcycles period, to not try a pass in that corner, to give the other rider more room, to take a different line, whatever. I wish no sympathy and I am not complaining. The bottom line is that this incident was 100% in my control and I am paying the consequences.
This has nothing to do with defending Lotus and everything to do with what is in your control. It's all about personal responsibility.
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I hate to say "I told you so", but I posted this:
I don't think you guys should be given the option of having the elise without the film... The paint work is on top of fibreglass so it comes off more easily than regular car paintwork, and to top that off the elise is low and usually travelling quite fast - the front of my car has no armorfend and it looks quite shabby now because of that (in fact, I am likely to respray it - at a cost of perhaps £500) - so I applaud Lotus for doing this.
A note to those of you who say "but I don't want it".. you will regret not going for it.
Craigy
... way back in June 2004, before any of you had your cars. Read the whole thread here (where you can read people getting very upset about having starshield forced on them).
Lotus CANNOT win with people behaving like this.
As for Joecoool - Dude, take responsibility for your actions... it's not like you weren't warned, and you didn't do much research or you'd have found the thread above.
*sigh*
Craigy
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I was one of the 1st to take delivery, but for such a huge purchase ($45K, 5 1/2 years of waiting) I did a tremendous amount of research to make sure I got it right. Knowing this car is unlike all others around, I wanted to pick out the exact right options. I opted for the Starshield with absolutely NO track record in the States, based only on the European's recommendations. They were kind enough to post pictures to help. Joe-let it go. You DIDN'T do your homework and now you're paying for it. Accept it and learn from it.
Hey, that was me!
Thanks dude
Craigy
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As for Joecoool - Dude, take responsibility for your actions... it's not like you weren't warned, and you didn't do much research or you'd have found the thread above.
*sigh*
Craigy To state that its the responsibility of the buyer to look up an internet site and then specifically search for everything that can possibly go wrong with the car is SIMPLY ABSURD. Its the manufacturer / dealer responsibility to properly advise its customers of any issues its surely aware of.
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As a buyer, you must ALWAYS assume "BUYER BEWARE". I research things to death before making a purchase, and still make mistakes sometimes. Sellers love to see people who assume that the seller will openly tell them everything about the product, and how it compares to others. Those kind of buyers are known in the trade as "suckers". Thinking anything else is absurd in the real world.
Sure, you can still get upset with the seller when things go wrong. But, they legally only have just so much responsibility to you as a buyer. And it isn't like you can go to some other brand and expect to get much better treatment. Pretty much all sellers will take the same attitude, with just some spot exceptions on certain issues about the item they are selling. Even the brands with the best reputations have a lot go wrong with them that the seller doesn't tell you about in advance. For example, did you know that the early Honda Odyssey minivans have chronic transmission problems - even worse than the Chrysler minivans? Do you think for one second that the Honda salesman is going to tell you that?
Lotus does recommend getting StarShield to protect the paint - they simply don't require it. How thoroughly that message comes across depends on your salesman and the questions you ask.
Sure, Lotus does plenty wrong. But so does Lexus, Ford, Ferrari, etc. No one has hidden the fact that there will be things wrong with the Lotus at a higher rate than most other modern cars.
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Lotus does recommend getting StarShield to protect the paint - they simply don't require it.
Now, after another romp up in the twisties, I can see why Lotus doesn't require star shield.
The rockers are still spotty, just not chipped. If you had been forced to get starshield you'd probably now be complaining that your rockers are foggy rather than chipped.
You know what? For all the grief you got for putting that rhino hide on your car, if your aim was to reduce the appearance of road travel's wear and tear, you probably have succeeded better than I.
If your aim was to look like a brand new car, well starshield doesn't achieve that. Keeping your laser blue under glass is about the only way you could have prevented having to do what you ultimately did. So your car is little heavier than the average elise (in more ways than one. heehee).
The rest of you: leave Joe alone already please. None of us has a perfect car now unless you haven't driven it.
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And I am now the proud owner of a deep gouge 2 inches above where my clear bra ends on the top of my right front fender, and a smashed windshield. Oh, well.
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Doesn't matter now anyway, the problem is solved. I've run several autocrosses and have not gotten any more chips. Hell, I even took a scrubbing brush to the line-x coating to remove cone marks and they came off with a little elbow grease.
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Sorry to hear Chris. You had to prove me right, eh? That sucks. How did it happen?
This hasn't been a good weekend for Elise health.
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Sorry to hear Chris. You had to prove me right, eh? That sucks. How did it happen?
This hasn't been a good weekend for Elise health.
It actually happened last weekend. I was on Interstate 15 in Rancho Bernardo heading North in the construction area when a big lifted pickup with off-road tires passes me on the right. It lifted up a big chunk of something, that bounced of the fender and hit the windshield, thoroughly shattering it. And I only had the car 1 week! Waaaa! Now I am thinking about how to best repair the paint gouge. I am thinking that I would rather have a body shop just fill in and thinly touch up just the gouge with as little paint as possible, as opposed to spraying a larger area or the whole clam. I don't trust the paint to match well enough, and the clear bra is pretty close, which I don't want to have to replace.
I was able to successfully repair a chin gouge I put in the car on the first day. I figured it was an opportunity to learn how to do it, and if I screwed up, I could always take it to a body shop and have them do it right.
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To state that its the responsibility of the buyer to look up an internet site and then specifically search for everything that can possibly go wrong with the car is SIMPLY ABSURD. Its the manufacturer / dealer responsibility to properly advise its customers of any issues its surely aware of.
I think Lotus needs to properly advise its customers with this label:
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To state that its the responsibility of the buyer to look up an internet site and then specifically search for everything that can possibly go wrong with the car is SIMPLY ABSURD. Its the manufacturer / dealer responsibility to properly advise its customers of any issues its surely aware of.
To make a purchase of this type, both in terms of investment AND in terms of the well known and documented quirks of Lotus, and for the buyer to NOT do some basic research of any kind, is EQUALLY ABSURD.
You've found your solution, great. No more stone chips, even though your car looks like the bed of a pickup. It works for you, fine.
Oh yeah, in case lotus didn't tell you, if you hit a deep pot hole, you might tear up your suspension.
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To state that its the responsibility of the buyer to look up an internet site and then specifically search for everything that can possibly go wrong with the car is SIMPLY ABSURD. Its the manufacturer / dealer responsibility to properly advise its customers of any issues its surely aware of.
I didn't state that - you did, just now.
What I stated was that Lotus can't win with you. We had a thread before you got your car where I posted pictures of the damage caused by road debris on the fibreglass-covered paint. I can only assume you saw them since you posted on that thread.
You weren't happy about the suggestion that they should force starshield on you, and now that you have paintchips right where the starshiled should have gone, you're upset at them. In my book that's how a child behaves: no matter what happens to the paint on your car, it can't be your fault; Lotus fault and the dealers fault yes, but not yours.
People behaving like you are the reason why there are so many problems with litigation. I liken it to the sort of person who sues in McDonalds because the coffee cup didn't have the warning "Hot" on it, then sues for damages after pouring it over themselves. It's depressing that the world has come to this point. There's no statute in law for common sense in any country I know of.
That's why it pisses me off. If unabated, it will put lotus out of business, along with every other small, specialist company without a team of lawyers vetoing everything, and demanding warning stickers on everything "warning: if driven without starshield on a road with debris, the paint will get beaten up. We might as well have a warning stating "Warning, do not drive into solid objects" on the car.
Craigy
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******I'm going to the Rhino dealer in the morning. If his price is reasonable, I'm just going to do that. Then it will be fixed for good.******
You could also enlarge the mudflaps behind the front wheels. They are not wide enough to protect from kickup. On LSS cars, especially. The PIC below was taken with the camera near the portion of the rockers ahead of the rear wheels.
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AW makes a great point. I can wash and wash and I have a cloudy, foggy icky area on the rocker panel where I've got a ton of damage to the Starshield. I'm sure the paint looks awesome underneath, but I don't see that today, and I won't see it until I replace the Starshield. That won't happen for at least another year.
Stan-if you find some nice, wider flaps, let us know!!
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I didn't state that - you did, just now.
What I stated was that Lotus can't win with you. We had a thread before you got your car where I posted pictures of the damage caused by road debris on the fibreglass-covered paint. I can only assume you saw them since you posted on that thread.
You weren't happy about the suggestion that they should force starshield on you, and now that you have paintchips right where the starshiled should have gone, you're upset at them. In my book that's how a child behaves: no matter what happens to the paint on your car, it can't be your fault; Lotus fault and the dealers fault yes, but not yours.
People behaving like you are the reason why there are so many problems with litigation. I liken it to the sort of person who sues in McDonalds because the coffee cup didn't have the warning "Hot" on it, then sues for damages after pouring it over themselves. It's depressing that the world has come to this point. There's no statute in law for common sense in any country I know of.
That's why it pisses me off. If unabated, it will put lotus out of business, along with every other small, specialist company without a team of lawyers vetoing everything, and demanding warning stickers on everything "warning: if driven without starshield on a road with debris, the paint will get beaten up. We might as well have a warning stating "Warning, do not drive into solid objects" on the car.
Craigy No, thats a load of crap.
I posted in the other thread that I didn't want the starshield because I did not want yellowing under the plastic. No one who posted before me said anything about damage that would automatically result without it. You then make the assumption that several days later I return to the thread to see other responses?
Regardless, had Lotus PROPERLY EXPLAINED that there would unquestionably be damage to the car for those who chose not to order the starshield, then yes, I would have purchased it with the car.
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Thanks Jer. I was beginning to wonder if anyone was reading what I wrote. No matter what one does, driving the car will cause unsightliness -- omigosh!
Think about all the complaints had Lotus insisted on starshield:
"It doesn't stay clear. It doesn't work. Bad Lotus decision. Fix it under warranty" -- the Starship Enterprise shield fanatics.Craigy and the myriad others who've made the same point are right. Griping gives rise to litigation and the resultant "legalist advised protect mode" leads to mediocrity.
"It doesn't go up/around/under/behind enough of my car: how come? Bad Lotus decision. Fix my paint." -- the nothing is good enough crowd.
It's easy to be dissatisfied, but to what purpose? That one can't squeeze the last drop out of any container? "WAAH, my world isn't perfect!" Well wake up entirely folks. One never achieves the perfect state: one can only approach perfection, and then at great expense.
Pursue perfection. Fine. Perhaps you'll catch excellence. Yet even excellence in areas reached by no others is never enough for a self-selected few. Is it possible that all these gripers never heard about the killing of the goose that laid the golden egg? Or lived where malcontents and criminals ruined things for everybody else?
For the perfectionists: when you catch your own tail, let me know.
For the Trekkies: Flingons will penetrate your starshields.
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I posted in the other thread that I didn't want the starshield because I did not want yellowing under the plastic. No one who posted before me said anything about damage that would automatically result without it.
Why exactly do you think Lotus recommends it then? Did you think people put it on because it looks good?
"Sir, we recommend you do not drink that hot coffee!"
"Ok, but I will drink it anyway.... YEAOWWW! Why didn't you specifically tell me that I would get burned!?!?!? I'm going to sue you!"