Cars are another part of the Sands Mechanical Museum. I used to own a Caterham Super Seven and an NSX. I sold the NSX to make room for my wife's M3. I finally bought a Lotus Elise. All these cars are documented in the Museum. (Click on blue text for additional information.)
Lotus Elise
The Lotus Elise is a modern sports car. It achieves its performance through light weight. It corners and brakes as well as any other car, communicates its intentions better than any other car, and accelerations faster than most other cars. It is a "minimal" car, simple but elegant, like the Seven. This car is fun to drive!
The kids know what it is because I talk about it constantly. Now that we have one, the kids like it because it is light, nimble and quick. It also gets a lot of attention when I take them to school
(I also retained the original Elise front page)
Caterham Super Seven
The Super Seven is a component car, originally the seventh design by Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus. It was designed in the late 1950s but is still being manufactured today. Mine weighs 1200 pounds and has about 130 horse power. With autocross tires, it generates 1.25 gees lateral cornering force. One variant held the world record for 0-60 mph for a production car in 3.48 seconds. It is a street legal race car.
The kids like it because they can see over the sills. It is light, nimble and quick, just like the NSX and the Elise.
Honda (Acura) NSX
The Honda NSX is a modern sports car, an effort by Honda to produce an exotic, world class sports car. It has one of the largest performance envelopes of any car ever built. I can drive it to the store for groceries, or travel safely at 160 mph for 15 minutes. I have done both. I autocrossed it and drove it in the Nevada Open Road Challenges. It is also a technical wonder.
The kids like it because it has lots of buttons to push and because it is red (they were young when we owned it). It is light, nimble and quick, just like the Seven and the Elise.
Ford GT40
The Ford GT40 is the car I wanted, until the Elise came out. It also is a street legal race car. I hope the kids will like it as much as the other two. It is light, nimble, and quick, in a different way than the NSX and the Super Seven. But I still want one.. This is more difficult to achieve, because there are only so many made and they are very expensive. Ford recently built a concept car called the GT and it will be produced in limited numbers.
Electron
The Electron is an experimental car built by Robin Shute, a 15 year old. There is a Lotus connection as the body is from the Lotus soap box derby entry for the Goodwood Speed Week.