MX5 vs Elise - Debate

[Strangely Brown]

I have an Elise because I love the way that it feels, looks and goes. It has fabulous handling, looks rather fetching and will most things to shame under 100mph. Add to that the fact that it returns a steady average of 40mpg and it's a winner.

The downside, for me, if the lack of a properly useable boot. I want to be able to go away for long weekends and not have to resort to stuffing clothes into small soft bags just to get them through the boot opening. It is, as far as I am concerned, the only real downside to the car.

The MX-5 is a bit too underpowered (in standard form) for my liking but is every bit as fun and is a hell of a lot more practical. If I could have a Monster Miata over here and get reasonable mileage per £££ then I'd take one over the Elise in a heartbeat.

[Altrezia]

Had both, and although the MX5 is surprisingly good, the Elise is miles ahead in every area IMHO. Better brakes, better steering feel, better road holding, better driving position, better seats. I would definitely have another MX5 - but only if another Elise is not an option.

[xyphod]

If you like to tinker. Then the old K-series is a little more tunable without having to resort to forced induction.
The MX-5 having a low compression ratio, standard bolt ons don't really give you any gains.
The K-Series with a fast road cam, decent exhaust manifold, VVC plenum and a hurricane filter system will give you some nice gains, add in a new ECU and you get a very nice engine pushing 140+ bhp.
Get some head work done (Dave Andrews) and you will see a very drivable 170+bhp.
Having driven the MX-5 (MK1) I didn't like the rev characteristics, i.e. didn't rev very far and seemed to take an age to get up the revs.

[kambites]

xyphod said:

Having driven the MX-5 (MK1) I didn't like the rev characteristics, i.e. didn't rev very far and seemed to take an age to get up the revs.

Is that not the same as saying "it was slow"?

[Munter]

kambites said:

xyphod said:

Having driven the MX-5 (MK1) I didn't like the rev characteristics, i.e. didn't rev very far and seemed to take an age to get up the revs.

Is that not the same as saying "it was slow"?

I suspect what xyphod did was floor it while the revs were below 4000. Anything below 4000 is what I let the Mrs use. Not enough torque to get into trouble. Above 4000 to ~6500 is the fun zone and revs pick up significantly better there. 6500 to 7200 is what you use when you forget to change up or you want to make the passenger deaf.

[kambites]

Munter said:

kambites said:

xyphod said:

Having driven the MX-5 (MK1) I didn't like the rev characteristics, i.e. didn't rev very far and seemed to take an age to get up the revs.

Is that not the same as saying "it was slow"?

I suspect what xyphod did was floor it while the revs were below 4000. Anything below 4000 is what I let the Mrs use. Not enough torque to get into trouble. Above 4000 to ~6500 is the fun zone and revs pick up significantly better there. 6500 to 7200 is what you use when you forget to change up or you want to make the passenger deaf.

To be fair, the Elise is exactly the same. They vary a bit depending on the version, but they're all pretty gutless below about 3500rpm. The 160bhp VVC in mine doesn't really pick up until about 5500.

[JCW_Matt]

Thanks for the replies guys, some nice input. I belive the context of this conversation and statement did not involve anything to do with practicality or price - it was just a generalised statement that the MX5 was a better handling car than the Elise - Regardless. A criminal statement if you ask me!

P.S Isoproturon1 - many thanks for the grammer correction, its Monday morning, and I am so glad you had your Collins English dictionary to hand

[thinfourth2]

An entirely pointless argument as it cannot be clarified by anything other then personnel experience, opinion and preference

So until the "gigglemeter" is invented there is no quantifiable answer

[teapea]

Elise, who would say the MX-5 handles better?
sure it's more practical, and cheaper but come on

[matt uk]

teapea said:

handles better

But in quantifiable terms, what does this actually mean?


Surely it's a case of what do you prefer?

[JCW_Matt]

thinfourth2 said:

An entirely pointless argument as it cannot be clarified by anything other then personnel experience, opinion and preference

So until the "gigglemeter" is invented there is no quantifiable answer

Its a lovely argurment if you ask me.

If you have a track - with cones and various challenging bends and one car crosses the line before the other in a 'handling test' - surely that car is the better handler.

[wooooody]

thinfourth2 said:

An entirely pointless argument as it cannot be clarified by anything other then personnel experience, opinion and preference

So until the "gigglemeter" is invented there is no quantifiable answer

Jon's alive remember.

[teapea]

Well i would define handling as ability to compose itself through corners?

i.e. on a track, which one looses grip first?

How would you define handling? i guess thats the point, but to me handling relates to grip, and i guess feel through the wheel ect

difficult, i would take the elise though, the elise is cool the mx-5 is for hairdressers/your girlfriend, simple :P

[Strangely Brown]

JCW_Matt said:

If you have a track - with cones and various challenging bends and one car crosses the line before the other in a 'handling test' - surely that car is the better handler.

That's one way of looking at it. What if you have two "normal" drivers both pushing on a little and both find the edge of the envelope. If one car is easier to predict and control then surely that car is the better handler?

Note: I'm not saying that the MX5 is the better handler, because I don't think it is; I'm just pointing out that the "question" must be qualified before it can be answered.

Edited by Strangely Brown on Monday 12th January 12:25

[OnlyMX5ives]

Handling / obtaining the fastest lap time / limpet grip etc are NOT the same thing.

IIRC the MX5 is the only car to win the Performance Car (IIRC) Best handing car of the year twice (Mk1 and Mk2)

It talks to you and lets you feel like Ayton Senna at 50mph.

A Westy does this better of course but for a main stream car the MX5 is very good.

The Elise is the faster car and has higher levels of grip but I'd suggest that 90% of decent drivers can get to 90% of the 5's abilities within ten minutes of driving it.

Try doing the same with the Elise and you'll have a lot of written off cars.

I think its this 'accessability' that the magazines raved about.

(and I love too)

[kambites]

I don't know where this idea that the Elise is hard to drive fast comes from. If you're the kind of driver who considers it to be dull to drive unless you're hanging the back end out around bends, the Elise obviously wont be ideal. But I genuinely think that anyone who can drive an MX5 at 90% could do the same with an Elise. It, at least in S2 form, is an astoundingly easy car to steer on the throttle.

The only way to get into trouble in the Elise is if you lift off suddenly in the middle of a corner.

Edited by kambites on Monday 12th January 12:30

[heebeegeetee]

xyphod said:

I think it depends on who's driving it.
An Elise in experienced hands will beat any MX5 around any track, due to grip handling. (assuming standard cars)

I think you've got that the wrong way round. An MX5 in anybodies hands could be pedalled quickly enough i would say, but the Elise being mid/rear (as in more rear than mid) engined, it's harder to jump in and find the limits quickly enough. Certainly, i had no trouble beating up a good few elises at a Donny track evening in my standard 7 year old MX5 on st tyres, much to my total surprise (not least because of the 'hardcoreism' on display from the Elise owners i have to say - track stickers, race boots and gloves everywhere, even an alloy diffuser mounted under the rear of the one car. Then it turned out the more 'hardcore' they were, the slower they were, with diffuser chap slowest of all. God knows what that was all about).

GKP said:

TheGreatSoprendo said:

That's about right. They're both fine handling cars, but in different ways. I don't think it's possible to claim that anything is "the" best handling car as it's quite subjetive an cannot really be quantified. I know that Autocar run a Best Handling Car competition periodically (annually?) and that the MX-5 has won this twice, so maybe that was the basis for the statement? As for "what happened to the Elise" on those 2 occassions, I guess you'd have to ask Autocar.

Would that be when they had an MX5 to give away as a prize?

Nope.

It won best handling car on sale in Britain all of its own accord.

Didn't realise it had done it twice though. The second time there was an Elise or derivative in the selection of cars, but i would imagine the first time the Elise hadn't been thought of at that time.

JCW_Matt said:

thinfourth2 said:

An entirely pointless argument as it cannot be clarified by anything other then personnel experience, opinion and preference

So until the "gigglemeter" is invented there is no quantifiable answer

Its a lovely argurment if you ask me.

If you have a track - with cones and various challenging bends and one car crosses the line before the other in a 'handling test' - surely that car is the better handler.

Yes and no. The result often will be the quicker car will win, and the Elise being much lighter, it should win every time. But driving around a course that you know is different from being out on the public road.

I was surprised on my track evening though, because the one Elise that i was tussling with in particular was a little bit quicker than me on the straight but i was quicker than him in the corners, most notably the right left chicane at the end of the straight, where i would pull a boat load out of him.

The fact is, so long as its set up properly (which a great many are not) the MX5 is a very good handling car indeed, whether people will care to admit to it or not. Autocar also once did (once? i dare say they've done it a few times in its history) a review of what it considered to be the best sports car of all time. In first place was the 911, but in second place they didn't choose the Elise,. nor the '60s Elan, but the humble MX5. I think that says a lot.

The MX5 probably isn't as sharp as an Elise, but i would imagine its a whole lot more fun possibly, simply because of its benign, easy to feel, fun handling. Just t'other night, on a deserted roundabout, i gave my (now supercharged) car a good push on the pedal in that cold weather, and the tail slewed out more than i planned for and i snapped the throttle shut far too sharply really, and the car snapped back into line without even the merest hint of fishtail, which really amazes me, it really does. Good job it's foolproof, i suppose...

[Munter]

kambites said:

The only way to get into trouble in the Elise is if you lift off suddenly in the middle of a corner.

Considering thats always why I spin the MX5.... possibly I best step away from the Elise Classifieds.

nb. I only spin when under instruction. I maintain they overestimate my ability and "egg me on". They maintain if I'd just kept my foot in it'd have been fine....

[sliced bread]

An interesting discussion - but the Lotus Elan (renowned ancestor of the Elise and on which, we're told, the MX5 was based) may well be better than either. Possibly.

[kambites]

sliced bread said:

An interesting discussion - but the Lotus Elan (renowned ancestor of the Elise and on which, we're told, the MX5 was based) may well be better than either. Possibly.

The MX5 was sort of an amalgamation of everything that was good about European sports cars of the 60s and 70s. It's a gross oversimplification to say it was based on the Elan.

The Elan is a glorious handling car though; I seriously considered one instead of the Elise but decided I couldn't live with it as a daily driver.