Living with a Larini....

[Esprit]

After having a Larini for a week, I can say that I'm pleasently surprised… am most impressed with the sound and the performance gains. I've done a few hundred miles of open road driving and it's really only slightly louder inside the cabin than the standard exhaust… no booming or droning, just a slightly deeper and more purposeful tone than standard with a nice bark if you're pressing up through the gears. From outside the car at a trackday, people were continually asking me what I'd done to the exhaust to make it sound so fantastic… it was fairly loud, but almost all who quizzed me on it agreed that the sound was better than any Elise they'd heard before!

As for the performance, there's a definite increase… probably mostly in the headers, but still an overall performance gain nonetheless….. Given that out of 45 cars and 14 Elises (including one S2 Exige) I managed the third fastest time overall (In a near-standard S1) and the fastest time overall on street-rubber speaks for itself….. The previous owner of my car (who now has the S2 Exige) couldn't believe I was almost matching times with him throughout the day…. "wish I'd bloody never sold it to you mate" I believe were his words.

Many will have read my tales of woe getting the Larini to fit properly etc, but this is all in the past now…. I'm left with an exhaust system that seems near perfect for every occasion. The only thing I have to do now is get some decent dB readings done so I can tell you lot how it'd get on back in the UK where noise is more of an issue on-track than here.