WHAT L-O-T-U-S REALLY STANDS FOR
Times move on, and in 2007 I bought a brand-new, British-racing-green Lotus Exige S. Nought to sixty in a vinegar stroke. What a gorgeous-looking car! I had a stage-two exhaust fitted so’s I couldn’t hear anything. The noise, oh that noise, it was absolutely fabulous! Heads turned and jaws dropped as I drove by.
Now, here’s where the problem was. On the second day, my inside door handle came off in my hand. The dealership took it away; it came back four days later: “All fixed, Brian, no more problems.” “Hold on,” I said. “Don’t leave till I try it.” So I got in, tried it once, tried it twice, oh, fuck me, it’s off again. The car goes back on the truck for a replacement door, and ten days later it’s back. Now I’m a little suspicious of everything. And, you see, the door handle on this car is important, because the outside one doesn’t really exist and the side window’s too small for you to reach back and hit the button. So if you crashed, you’d be trapped. Hallelujah, it worked!
Off I went, and it started raining, Florida rain, swathes of the stuff comin’ at you. I turned on the one big windscreen wiper. I want you now to imagine a noise like Mariah Carey singing full-throat with a prize leek up her arse. I nearly shat; I thought the cat had got into the engine bay. When I stopped gasping “What the fuck was that?,” off it went again to the dealership. Five days later, it came back. The guy looked me straight in the feet and said, “Hey, Mr. Johnson, the destrangulation millipod was congratulating the semihydrosternic anticular.” I nodded and said, “Did ya fix it?” Still looking at me square in the feet, he said, “I don’t know what it means either, but the wiper’s working again.” Right then, I’d had this car three and a half weeks and I’d got forty-five miles on the clock.
Off we go again. My wife, Brenda, said, “Let’s go for dinner in it,” which was strange, because getting in and out of the bugger you had to have the moves of a young Olga Korbut. “Okay, let’s go!” I was driving into town when a police car stopped me. My old mate Officer Dee. “Hey, Brian, do you know you have a brake light out?” “I can’t have, me darlin’, the car’s brand-new.” She put her foot on the brake, and she was right. I couldn’t believe it! She said, “Get it fixed tomorrow. You know it’s the death penalty in Florida.” Funny, very funny. This was just getting worse—what else could go wrong?
Folks, get this. I drive on and come to a stop at the traffic lights in downtown Sarasota, then the right-hand headlight fell out. I mean, it popped out, it was just hanging by the wires—much to the amusement of everyone watching. Officer Dee, who was behind me, got out of her car and said, “Did you build this yourself?” That was it. I just started laughing along with everyone else.
The Lotus dealership said they were sorry, but a few other Exiges’ headlights had been popping out. “Oh, well, that’s all right then.” They sent their top man to Tampa to go over the whole car, and I got a nine-page report on the things that hadn’t even gone wrong yet. This time it was gone for two weeks—one last chance, I thought.
After two weeks, the telephone rang. It was my buddy Nick Harris, who was with the Minardi race team at Sebring. “Hey, Brian, come over. We’re testing our new cars.” Great, because it’s a fantastic drive to Sebring from my house, State Road 71 then on to Route 66. It was 99 degrees outside. I was enjoying the drive, with the air-conditioning on full blast. Then, twenty miles from the track, it packed up. It was getting hot, and I was leaking like a pirate’s poxed-up dick. God, it was hot. I made it to the track, and the Minardi guys checked over the car, said the cabin was 125 degrees.
Brilliant. How was I gonna get home and not die? I remembered Ice Cold in Alex, the British war movie where they started killing each other because they were, yeah, sweating. Christ, I might kill myself with the sweating thing. Calm down, lad, easy. I said my good-byes to the lads after an hour and gritted my teeth. “C’mon, you can do it.”
I was driving into the sun; I had to get out two or three times to cool down in the 97 degrees outside. I got home and never put a foot in the car again. After much humming and buck-passing, I eventually got my money back, less the $12,000 the government took for tax. Governments are funny like that; once you give them money, they never wanna give it back. I told my old friend Red the story, and he said, “Braaaan, in South Carolina they say Lotus stands for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.” He wasn’t fuckin’ kidding.
P.S.: Lotus America said, “We’ll give you your money back as long as you don’t tell anybody about this.” Since when was telling the truth illegal?
P.P.S.: Lotus, would you please tell your blind, deaf, and dumb quality-control fella to get a grip, but not on anything on a Lotus—it’ll come away in his hand.