Long time gone: Part 1 of 2; THE HARD-CORE ENTHUSIAST'S DREAM CAR HAS ARRIVED. HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL CARE ENOUGH TO BUY ONE?(News)

Byline: J.P. VETTRAINO

If you've paid attention the last several years, you know the Lotus Elise. Perhaps you've lusted for one. We have now touched, smelled and driven the federalized Elise on U.S. soil. The first new Lotus in the United States in 14 years is everything we expected and most of what we hoped for.

The 2005 Elise weighs less than a subcompact and feels as rigid as sports cars that cost twice as much. Its engine sits two feet over your shoulder, in front of the rear axle, and you can't match its power-to-weight ratio for the money. Zero to 60 mph in 4.7 seconds, 150-mph top speed-those are almost supercar track numbers, with an honest 25 mpg. The Elise has bigger brakes than luxury sedans that weigh twice as much. On track day it will keep the corners of your mouth pinned to your ear lobes, and it is not bad at all if you drive it to get somewhere. We would say it's cute in a Pokemon fashion, but we'll leave that up to you. If it looked like a Radio Flyer, we wouldn't care. It's that much fun.

Elise is true to Lotus founder Colin Chapman's vision of what motor transport should be, only better. It has near-perfect Lotus dynamics and a bulletproof, still-screamin' Toyota drivetrain that ships to the Lotus factory in Hethel, England, in a crate. All this comes for the price of a loaded Lexus ES 330.

Maybe that's why Lotus Cars USA in Atlanta has high hopes for Elise. This is the car to relaunch the brand, fortify the dealer network and set the stage for expanding the line to three cars. To achieve these goals, Lotus USA need sell only 2200 Elises a year. Toyota sells that many Camrys a weekend, and the 39 Lotus dealers across the country have orders account- ing for a year's supply. What can go wrong?

Ask yourself what went wrong with the Europa, or the 1991 Elan, or the Lotus F1 team, which accumulated the sport's most impressive record before it changed hands and went belly up in the 1990s. Sometimes business stinks.

The Elise represents what this magazine loves, from a company peppered with our kind of people. Elise tests the viability of a brand and its values, to be sure, but ultimately it might test our values, and their commercial strength circa 2005. They mean something, don't they?