This article originally appeared in the December 2012 issue of Road & Track.

The first time I drove a Lotus Elan, everything else I'd ever driven felt like a truck. And I mean real truck, as in Army deuce-and-a-half.

The Elan was light and small, but not demeaningly small or "cute." It was just right, roomy on the inside yet compact and sleek on the outside. It instantly made you wonder why so many other sports cars were so large and heavy—what were they trying to accomplish that the Elan couldn't do? Support a larger engine? (Which, in turn, required a heavier car?) Here we had reductionist thinking of the finest, leanest kind.

My first Elan drive came in the mid-seventies, in a lovely green Series 3 roadster. It was bought used by my friend and Formula Ford racing partner, John Jaeger. Curiously (perhaps ominously), it had recently traded hands between two other racing buddies after short periods of ownership. I myself considered buying this car but was short on cash due to the heartbreak of racing expenses.

John Lamm

So John bought this serially pre-owned Elan and we immediately took it for several semi-berserk back-road drives, as boy racers will. The steering and handling were wonderful, but we soon noticed that every time we drove the Elan hard—or just drove it at all—something went wrong. Nothing big or unrepairable, just annoying stuff. Once, the car stopped dead and we smelled fuel in the trunk. A rubber fuel line had sheared where it passed through a hole in the fiberglass bodywork. There were also random running problems linked to the labyrinthine intake system (a preheater and butterflies) on the desmogged Stromberg carbs. John and I agreed that the trick would be to fit an earlier Weber-carbureted head and then disassemble the car from top to bottom, fixing its kitcar-like shortcomings.

John Lamm

That, or sell it to someone else. Which John did, after six months of ownership.

As a professional mechanic during that decade, I worked on a few Elans and was appalled to discover you had to remove the head and oil pan to extract the somewhat ephemeral water pump. A myriad of odd things could go wrong with the electrics, vacuum-operated headlights, and so on. Undaunted, I still found the driving experience worth the trouble. I resolved to own one someday, telling my friends that it was just a car, put together with nuts and bolts. If you restored one carefully, I reasoned, you could make it reliable.

John Lamm

This is probably the same kind of reasoning that causes a young divinity student to marry an exotic dancer on the belief that she can be reformed and will eventually enjoy sitting by the fireplace on quiet evenings, reading a good book. In any case, I was not to be dissuaded, and about ten years ago, I found a nice Series 1 Elan to restore. And by "nice," I mean it had a rusted-out frame and needed everything. Which was perfect, as this was a car on which I actually wanted to do everything.

And so I did, over a period of three years. I restored the car as carefully and lovingly as I could, but I soon discovered that it was more than just a car. It was a largely hand-built machine with many clever but lightly constructed systems that required a deft touch to make them work. Also, very few replacement parts seemed to fit correctly, at least not without fettling and a certain amount of coercion. Motor mounts broke the minute I installed them, my new exhaust header hit the frame, headlight rims on the rotating buckets fouled on the bodywork, etc. It was the most stubborn, time-consuming, and expensive restoration I ever did. But I finally got it done, and the old magic was there.

John Lamm

My wife Barbara and I took the car on a from Wisconsin to Alabama, essentially the world's longest shakedown run. Many minor adjustments and repairs were needed on the way. A wiper blade, for instance, flew off into a nearby field during an evening rainstorm. We found it, but then the wiper motor quit. Just before the headlights went out. Nevertheless, we made the trip successfully, with the help of a toolbox, spare fuses, and a Mini Maglite. When we got home, I fixed all the little rattles and glitches I couldn't fix on the road, and after that the car was pretty good. But small things still cropped up on nearly every drive. After another year or so, I finally wearied of these roadside rituals and sold the car.

In a way, owning the Elan reminded me of flying a private plane: You have to stay current and treat it as your main hobby, and then—if you haven't spread yourself too thin with other activities—it offers sublime rewards.

John Lamm

How sublime was brought back to me when the two cars in our story were brought (by trailer, note) to my very backyard and I got to drive them through the green Wisconsin hills just west of our home. Driving both Executive Editor Sam Smith's red Series 2 and friend of the magazine Ben Thongsai's green Series 3, I was instantly resmitten. The light and tactile steering, combined with supple suspension and a weird, physics-defying sense of zero weight transfer in corners, provides a sensation akin to flying just over the ground. I'm convinced there's a powerful pleasure center in the brain that remains untapped until you drive an Elan. It's almost a drug.

John Lamm

And , which was clearly inspired by the Elan? I got out of it after a long section of winding back road and told Sam, "I'd forgotten how much fun these cars are to drive. The Elan is still about 15 percent sharper in all its transient responses, but the minute I got into the Miata something in my soul was instantly at rest. I think it's from knowing the car is absolutely solid, tough, and reliable. I drove faster in the Miata because I felt I could really lean on it."

John Lamm

So which is better? This little test has dangerously revived my enthusiasm for both cars, but if I were to get out my checkbook again, I'd probably lean toward the Mazda. I already have a for wrench exercise, and a Miata lets you really go places. That said, the Elan still gets the Pure Exquisiteness of Driving Award. It's the ballet slipper of sports cars, with an immediacy usually found only in single-seater racing cars. I suspect light weight is at the core of it, along with that magical Colin Chapman suspension geometry. Now that we have airbags and all kinds of impact protection, it may be impossible to duplicate this grin-inducing combination of traits in a modern car. The seems to have set a standard that's fixed in time. For those with patience, understanding, and plenty of tools.

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