Also, no, I have not rode in an Elise, but I've ridden in a Ferrari and a few Aston Martins. I think that's a "tad" higher "class" than the Elise and your 911. But don't worry, I'm sure your 911 is still cool, even though my low class mullet friends have you pwned in their Aston Martins and Ferrari. :rofl:


:lol2: Classy come back!

Ok, I don't know anyone who brags about their handling... guys don't come up to you at a stoplight and say "Let's go see who can get a higher skidpad?" In everyday life, it is pretty much about what is under the hood and going in a straight line... like Demon said, and I must concur, the streets are pretty much straight lines and perpedicular to one another. You will NEVER be in a street situation where superior handling gives you an edge over superior accleration. And if you think about it, no where on the road will the difference in handling really matter.
And Crazayjay, what do you mean, track days???

Ok, I don't know anyone who brags about their handling... guys don't come up to you at a stoplight and say "Let's go see who can get a higher skidpad?" In everyday life, it is pretty much about what is under the hood and going in a straight line... like Demon said, and I must concur, the streets are pretty much straight lines and perpedicular to one another. You will NEVER be in a street situation where superior handling gives you an edge over superior accleration. And if you think about it, no where on the road will the difference in handling really matter.
And Crazayjay, what do you mean, track days???

How about you realise that there are people out there that don't care about street racing.

All I care is about autox and track racing and that is all I do. Also what i care most about is my skill. The only thing I'm afraid is losing on a track to a lower perfomance car. If a gt3 beat me boo hoo, its all a question of how much money do you have to buy the best car. However money cannot buy skills.

And since track racing takes serious skill, as oposed to straight line racing(unless you run in the very low single digits), i like a car that would fit autox better and that would be the elise.

So bottom line if all you care is about how powerful your car is get a cobra swap a KB on it and be very fast to the next stoplight. But if you care about weekend track days and autox and what to develop the skill it takes to be very fast, get a car to complement that: elise.

It (track days) are where cars go zooming around corners at the local racetrack. There couldn't have put it much simpler if I tried.

Firstly, racing on the streets is stupid, it puts pedestrians and other road users in unessecary danger. Secondly I don't race on the street and neither should you, I have autocourses within an earshot of me as well as a membership to a car club, this lets me punt my car around corners come track day, so really sweet bugger all of my racing is done on straight roads and when it is, the road is cut short by a corner. So yes handling is the be all and end all of a car for me, I've only ever raced on a drag strip 4 times in my entire life.

Just because the roads are pencil straight in America, also does not mean, that this is the case in the rest of the world, because it isn't. Damn I wish GM and Ford would take note of that, maybe then they'll start building some inspring track cars that don't cost in excess of 150,000€.

For the most part, my car is just a rice killer. I accelerate to 55mph and then cruise. 55mph is the max the cops allow without giving a ticket, if the idiot next to me doesn't know i purposefully stopped accelerating, and THEN passes me after I've already flew ahead of him in the stoplight, then whatever. Also, usually there WOULDN'T be any pedestrians in the crosswalk when our light turn green. And once past that, I really doubt I'm going to hit any pedestrians on the sidewalk. If there's traffic to avoid, then obviously opening up my throttle is not a good idea, and I let the ricer next to me think he just beat me in a race, good for him, he'll have a story to tell his friends later.

Other times, it's on the onramp onto the highway, we actually have a lot of highways here, including a turnpike where the cops seem to avoid and no one seems to get ticketed for speeding, so to keep up with traffic is to drive 90mph...

Either way, the only legal racing I have where I live, is a 1/4-mile drag strip that you have to pay admission to get into. I don't have any tracks around where I live, but for my driving, I like the feel of low-end torque that you can feel even in low speed driving that's well within the speed limit. I think that's a lot safer than flying through corners because that's basically how you hit pedestrians crossing the street perpendicular to the street you are on. Also, I remember watching the old track races between unevenly matched cars such as the Saleen Mustang vs. an Acura NSX. The Acura NSX is much superior to the Mustang in the corners, but for a good amount of time the Mustangs were still winning against them simply because everytime they exit a turn, they pull away from the NSX with ease.

So there is a margin of overlap where straight-line speed does count into the equation even in track racing. The nimbler car must save enough time in it's superior cornering ability to counter the amount of time saved by the faster car everytime they come out of a turn and hit any kind of straight away. Unless the track is just a bunch of corners linked together like a go-cart track, there's still a chance for a good accelerator to beat a good handling car. So neither ability is single-handedly superior to the other like you guys seem to think (talking to both now, so don't think I have a double standard).

Being able to know when and how to apply the power in and out of the turns as well as remembering where any rises and drops in the road are to know when is the ideal time to hook a turn, all those things require skill. There are always ways around lack of traction in turning, it's up to the driver to figure out how to apply the car's full ability.

So technically, while "sophisticated" track folk will boast about how much better they are for having a car that can handle better, if they were beaten by one of these beasts that weren't even as specialized in turning, then technically, doesn't the driver of the low-end torque car like a Cobra have MORE skill than the driver of the Elise?

And it's not like the turning ability of any of these cars, like the Corvette, Mustang, Viper, are too shabby anyway, they are all designed to perform, but obviously every car have their strong points and weak points. And the manufacturer have good reason for where they distribute their priority. If Ford really wanted to build a light, high-revving car with perfect weight distribution for running on the track, I'm sure they could, but they choose not to, and that's to satisfy the people who want something like a Mustang Cobra. And I rarely see any stereotypical "rednecks" or "low-class" people with mullets driving a Mustang Cobra. In fact, most of the Cobra owning people I know are middle-aged middle-high income males who seem to be going through some kind of mid-life crisis. Yes, very similar to you Porsche owners, lol. The only true "redneck" friend I know drives an old raised Chevy Truck for mud boggin. All the "American Muscle" car owners I know are mid-20's rockers, and the newer cars like a 2003-4 Cobra would be the middle-aged men I spoke of.

Oh, now that I think about Porsche, I remember the moron spoiled kid i met, his parents own a realtor business and he drives a Porsche, and it's so stereotypical how he uses the car to try to "pick up chicks." What a freakin stuck-up loser, lol, all the people I know with much more money and much better cars don't act as bratty as he does, geez. :iceslolan

Anyway, again, this thread is asking for our own opinion on which we would choose, so I hope we don't see any more bashing of either side when someone picks one and states his/her reason...

i don't know i race on the highway anywhere from 40-120mph. and highways are never straight. so for the type of racing i do requires go balance of aceleration handling and braking. i'm sure you v8 guys race on the highway too, and that is where the handling comes into place. so yes even in good ol america there are still many places that we can demonstrate nice handling ( ie: highway on/ off ramps, long sweepers on the highways,and small highways with constant switch backs etc.)

I'm not trying to flame you guys, I'm trying to point out for everyday life, acceleration comes into play a lot more than handling... how many times a day will you use your power vs. your handling... going to work, I can't think of any challenging twisties on the way. With this in mind I'd rather have a car that gave up handling for acceleration.
Street Racing... I'm not talking about zipping around on the highway in the middle of the day... I'm talking about 2 AM in a quiet industrial area, nice clean strip... no one is in danger except perhaps the two racing. I live in LI there is no AutoX and no tracks here. As far as I know car guys are into building up their engines, faster=better, I cannot think of a bunch of car guys in a parking lot saturday night and one guy saying "you may be able to burn me, but I can out handle you!" Maybe things are just different out here.

All I know polygon, is that I never said straight line performance meant everything. I made sure I said that it was what I personally preferred everytime I said it. Then all I see is all these people bashing anyone who preferred the Cobra to say that track performance is the only thing that mattered. Then I see people coming here saying that they don't like how WE'RE saying straight line performance is everything. The posts I have made sure didn't say that, and the posts that I've read through didn't say that, they merely countered that straight line performance does COUNT.

Perhaps someone did say it and I didn't read it all the way through, so if that's the case, and that's who you were referring to, then sorry for accusing, but my points still stand.


This is a quote from you that I responded to:

Well obviously if the person's preferred car doesn't win in acceleration, then it's not important. That's the number one rule man! :)

So you did say that it is the most important to that affect. I am just arguing that it is not and is merely just a peice of the pie. Also, not all of my posts were simply directed at you. I was directing my opinion to everyone in the thread.

2005 Lotus Elise..hands down.

I don't understand what some people are trying to say, they are acting as if all roads are straight, that's not true there plenty of challenging roads out there that challenge a vehicles handling capabilities. I'm not with the people saying acceleration is all that matters and I'm not with the guys who say handling is the only thing that matters, to me the best cars are the one's that offer the greatest combination of these factors. First off if you think the Elise is not fast in a straight line your totally wrong, it's fast in a straight line, fast going however you want it to go. Now if you think the Cobra can't handle, your totally wrong, it might not handle as well as the Elise, but it does handle well, well enough atleast. The Elise to me would seem like the better car because it is simply more fun to drive, it offers a better combination of different performance factors than the Cobra. That's not knocking the Cobra, because the Cobra is also a very good car, but the Elise is just a better all around performance vehicle. This comparison is not asking which car is the best at the 1/4 mile drag strip, it's asking which is the best all around performance car.

I'm not trying to flame you guys, I'm trying to point out for everyday life, acceleration comes into play a lot more than handling... how many times a day will you use your power vs. your handling... going to work, I can't think of any challenging twisties on the way. With this in mind I'd rather have a car that gave up handling for acceleration.
Street Racing... I'm not talking about zipping around on the highway in the middle of the day... I'm talking about 2 AM in a quiet industrial area, nice clean strip... no one is in danger except perhaps the two racing. I live in LI there is no AutoX and no tracks here. As far as I know car guys are into building up their engines, faster=better, I cannot think of a bunch of car guys in a parking lot saturday night and one guy saying "you may be able to burn me, but I can out handle you!" Maybe things are just different out here.
Going to work? Try bogged down in Italian traffic, no space for racing there (Though I wouldn't put it past the crazy-assed locals to try it), though going every where else, there are some awesome corners, especially when I go between Genoa and Milan, good roads indeed.

I don't know, I take a few corners pretty fast if they are high visability corners, meaning I am 100% sure there are nobody there just about to cross, and my old 12 year-old car takes those corners brilliantly. I don't see any kind of regular day life driving that could challenge even a base-line car like mine, I don't see how I will ever experience anything beyond what a Cobra can do, or be able to completely take advantage of the full potential of some exotic sports car.

Not to mention parts and repair for the Elise, even if the purchase price is about the same, would be more than the Cobra, so I'll still be more worried about driving it everyday than I would a Mustang.

I don't know where you guys live, but I think I said it, I live in LI... no mountains, hills, twisties, etc. Roads that go North and South, and East and West. Demon has again said it best, I know of NO WHERE where I would ever use the superior handling of the Lotus, yet there are plenty of straights I could use straight-line power. Don't get me wrong, The Lotus is damn fast in a straight line, and if the keys for both were on a table I'd take the Lotus keys... just cause it's a lotus. But you guys get the point.