I'm still not quite sure how I ended up with an Elise. Unlike a lot of owners I have met since buying the little car, I have never lusted after a Lotus, nor did I wake up one morning and decide I must have one.

I had never owned a sports car before and the lure of something fun for the sunny summer months began to eat away at the back of my mind during the dark winter evenings. Being fortunate enough to be in a position to run two cars, whatever I decided upon did not have to meet practicality standards, so gone from the shortlist straight away were the hot hatches I'd toyed with the idea of several months previously. Having experienced the rare joy which is open-top motoring in the past, and having the second car for those days on which the meteorological and motoring gods have fallen out with each other, I wasn't finding myself enamoured by the prospect of having a solid roof either. This shrank the field further and, no matter how much time I spent deluding myself, the budget wasn't going to stretch to a Modenese Spider, modern or otherwise. Being about as mechanically minded as my grandmother (not the grandmother who drove heavy trucks during the Second World War, the other one) a classic certainly wasn't the way to go. Once I'd discounted the Toyota MR2 and Mazda MX-5 through my irrational fear of Japanese cars, I was left with a startlingly small list. Following the Japanese contingent to the 'no' list was the MG(T)F. I must confess I've never driven one, although a brief skim through owner's club forums on-line showed build quality, handling and mechanical issues occurring with worrying regularity. And so we came to Lotus. An illogical step to take, you may think, if I was put off by the issues with the MGs, however a friend had run an Elise for several years and a couple of evenings spent discussing ownership soon helped allay my fears that Norfolk's finest would fall apart within the first few days of ownership. Joining it on the final revision of the shortlist was Vauxhall's VX220.

This was still all a pipe-dream until I accompanied my girlfriend to Vauxhall, car shopping for her, and was greeted by a yellow VX220 Turbo. Being 6'1" I was fully expecting to struggle for space in the pint-sized car although, upon finding it rather roomy inside and it passing the girlfriend test ("ooh, it's like getting into a bath!") it began to make sense. Well, as much sense as a toy car makes.

After driving both cars at dealers and my head staging a wrestling match between the poser, the patriot and the petrolhead in me, I decided that I didn't want a sports car with a Griffin on the front, no matter what lay beneath, and that I'd rather one with some chap's initials on the nose. Yes, they're the same car essentially and, yes, they're both British but in the end it was something as shallow as the company name that clinched it for me. Lotus conjures up images of Formula One, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi and the triumphs of British engineering. Vauxhall reminds me of the Nova and a childhood spent in the back of a Cavalier.

Several weeks after the initial test drives, I found a 1999 Elise locally through SELOC.org. With 38,000 miles on the clock and a couple of small modifications, which I only would have made myself anyway, it seemed a good choice. A week or two after getting it checked over, I was standing in my bank with the seller making out a banker's draft in his name.

Driving the car back to work that afternoon was a somewhat surreal affair. Other than the brief test drives, with the obligatory chatty salesman next to me, it was a totally new experience coming from hatchbacks, saloons and estates. Here I was, on my own in what amounts to a go-kart, let loose on the A41. Aside from a slight 'back end' moment pulling out of a junction, the journey passed without major event. It did strike me, within the first ten minutes of being behind the wheel, how much positive attention the Lotus gets. I received several thumbs up and even a blown kiss! That weekend I covered some 600 miles, mainly on motorways unfortunately, and gradually began to get used to the behaviour of the car.

But nobody buys an Elise to drive up and down the motorway. The past few months have seen me gradually grow in confidence and admiration of the Lotus' back road finesse (as the mud splattered photographs show). While the 118bhp engine might not be the most powerful in the class, I'd read plenty of horror stories about the S1's tendency to swap ends with little warning if provoked so, naturally, the last thing I wanted to do was provoke it. As such, the first few weeks were spent finding my feet with the handling. Unfortunately the Elise isn't the ideal car to do this in as it sticks to the road like nothing I've ever driven. The first time I entered a corner thinking "oh God, I've gone in far too fast, I wonder what an Elise looks like with a bush through the roof?", I remained on the road, comfortably in control and with a slightly confused expression as I came out the other side. Since then, my confidence has slowly grown although, as I still don't really know what I'm doing with a rear wheel drive car, I have booked a day at North Weald airfield in July for a spot of driver training.

One day I spent eleven hours on various motorways in my Audi, until almost one o'clock that morning so I wasn't intending to go to Goodwood, at 7am, for The Breakfast Club. But the day dawned bright and blue skied, so I creaked in to the Lotus and headed for the A3. I narrowly missed my rendezvous with a couple of Ferraris and some Clio V6s, so decided to stop, give the Elise a drink, remove the roof and carry on towards Goodwood on my own. As soon as I turned off the A3, I instantly forgot that I'd spent almost half a day trapped in a cocoon of leather and air conditioning only a few hours ago and fell in love with the sparse Lotus again. After the previous day's exertions, a rather rapid drive down and the early start I was more than slightly weary when I decided to head back to the Home Counties. It was taking it easy on the way home which reaffirmed the tamer aspect of the Lotus; no matter what speed one drives the Elise, it's a joy. The slow trudge home was just as entertaining as the fast journey down. Sitting almost on the tarmac, with every nuance of the road surface relayed through the tiny steering wheel, it's easy to feel like part of the car.

Yes, you have to fold yourself in to the driver's seat, it rattles, it squeaks and I got drenched in traffic during a downpour on the M25 last week because I couldn't put the roof back on with the touch of a button, much to the amusement of a Boxster driver, but these foibles are forgiven the instant the sun comes out and the roof comes off.