Lotus Elise vs. Mazda Miata: Which is the best $35,000 Daily Driver? (Part 1)

is the Miata always the answer as I'm often told or is Lotus always the answer or is it sometimes the answer or is it the answer when it's working hello chess and welcome back to the most informative Lotus channel on YouTube and in that spirit today we are going to do a comparison video the first in a series of actual comparison videos we're going to talk about what it's like to live with and daily drive a Mazda Miata Indy and compare that with a Lotus Elise it's sort of an interesting comparison because a Lotus Elise on the used market you can find a nice one for about $35,000 the same goes for a new Mazda Miata nd they're about $35,000 and they can be almost half price if you find a used one by the end of this series hopefully you will know which car the Miata or the Lotus is right for you so for our first test we're gonna talk about getting in and out of both the Miata and the Elise now when you look at the Miata next to the Elise the Miata looks like you know it looks like a minivan in size it's much physically larger but for a lot of people it's still a challenging car to get in and out of I'm about 510 180 so I'm relatively average height and weight but and for me it's relatively easy to get in and out of the car but for folks who are different sizes and shapes getting in and out of the Miata can be a challenge so let's look at the way that I get in and out of Miata and we'll talk about you know kind of the motions that you're gonna have to make to get in and out that are a little bit different than what you would have to do for a typical passenger car so first we will open the door all the way and then I will place my right leg in all the way down and at this point I start to feel a little bit of strain in my thigh and then I sort of twist and fall into the car so for me that's relatively easy to do but if I were much larger or much taller it would be a tighter squeeze to get in the car and your knees will have to come up higher and so depending on how athletic you are and how ambulatory you are you know it can be a bit of a challenge to get in and out initially you then have to bring up your left leg and it's almost at your chest I mean you essentially have to bring it up as high as you can and then shift over to then be fully seated and looking forward the seats have relatively tight bolstering and for someone much larger than me I could imagine it actually not being terribly comfortable and so it's something to think about with the Miata it's something that you probably want to try getting in and out of first before buying the car once you're inside it's relatively easy but still a bit of a stretch to grab the handle and pull it in but once you're inside it's a pretty comfortable place to be although even for me at five foot ten and around 180 it's still a pretty tight fit there's not a great deal of room I have a few inches on each side of my knees and in front of them but not much more than that the seat is adjustable um however for taller folks it should be noted that when you pull the seat back as far as it can go it does cause some squeaks and rattles when you're driving the car and the owner tells me that it is quite annoying so that is something to think about if you are on the taller side it should also be noted that the steering wheel in the Miata does not telescope in the 2016 to 2018 model years in 2019 s and newer there is some adjustment there so it's just something to think about if you're thinking about buying one of these cars but all-in-all as far as sports cars go it's you know more challenging than a typical passenger car but not not extremely difficult into something I think that most people can probably handle to get out of the car you then pull your left leg and your knee forward set it down and you'll have to put most of your weight and pressure on your knees so if you have trouble with your knees it could be a little bit challenging to get in and out of the car you then rotate your other knee forwards step out of the car you have to duck a little bit to clear it but again not impossible to get in and out of but it's something you got to think about a little bit more than you would with say my daily driver a Toyota Highlander okay now that we've gotten in and out of the Miata let's do the same thing with the Lotus Elise so first open the door Shin now you will put your right leg in as far as you can which will require a bit of stretch once you have it in as far as you can you will then sort of fall back duck your head into the car you will then lift your left leg up and rotate it across this is for a left-hand drive car not a right-hand drive car but I you would reverse that if you are in parts of the world that drive on the wrong side of the car now once you're in the car you can easily grab the door handle close it it's closer than on the Miata because everything inside the car is closer than on the Miata so now I will demonstrate getting out of the élysée which is its own other process first open the door you will then lift your leg up and you've got to lift it up pretty far and then come out and then for just as an example like as I'm seated now I can't reach the floor so you have to push out of the car and kind of lean your elbow against it and extract yourself from the vehicle what you don't want to do with the élysée is grab either the windshield or the steering wheel in order to give yourself an assist getting in and out you can brake the surrounding area for the windscreen just a super difficult part to find and replace the same thing with the steering wheel it's just not designed to have stress from that angle placed on it in that way so often when people are getting in and out for the first time they will grab those things to assist them but it's something that you don't want to do if you can avoid it you know putting a little light pressure on it now and then it's not a big deal but do not put all of your weight on the windscreen or the steering wheel in order to help extract yourself from the élysée so in this particular test I think the Miata has to win overall although the élysée should get one point for style because getting in and out of this car once you know how to do it well you know it's sort of a badge of honor and an impressive thing to do there are two kinds of people in the world those who know how to get in and out of a Lotus Elise and those who do not one thing to note however when you're talking about daily driving this car you know getting in and out once you know how it's not so bad but if you forget your briefcase inside of your house because you still use a briefcase you know you have to getting in and out over and over and over again gas station you know you're doing a long drive you have to do it multiple times a day that's where things start to get fatiguing doing it a couple times a day is not a big deal but it's when you have to hop out over and over and over again that you start to really appreciate every other car in the world except for this one for the next test we're going to show what it's like to remove the top from both the Elise and the Miata so first things first you need to roll down the windows in the élysée in order to take the top off so first you have to get in the car in order to roll down the windows in the car with the Touring pack you first have to put the key in the ignition in order to get power for the accessories to roll down the windows you can't do it without putting the key in the ignition once the windows are down take the key out back out of the car underneath the top there are two pins that you push in and then you roll it about half way and go to the other side of the car press in the clips here again roll it about half way at the top I didn't place it in the passenger seat temporarily so beneath the top there are these two spines that are made out of flexible plastic you'll press in in order to remove them from their notches passenger side first and then the driver's side okay you could leave the top off to be your passenger in the élysée it's a nice quiet passenger it doesn't weigh too much but most people are gonna put it in the boot so now you go to the rear of the car and start the key lift the boot and support it now it should be noted that my car has the sector 111 lid bone which makes it a little bit easier to do this in one motion a stock Elise will have an arm that you will lift up to support the deck lid place the the top is now more or less fully inside the boot of the car and now lower the deck lid press down to close and you have a topless Lotus Elise easy as pie in order to put the top down on the Miata you reach up there's only one latch not to like a lot of kind of others have loosen it push the top back and down and it will click into place so the Miata gets a point there that was a lot easier than on the Lotus Elise but with the Lotus Elise you get more exercise so it gets a point for exercise for our next test we're going to look at storage space in the trunk and the boot of the Miata and Elise respectively now what we have here is a pelican 1510 hardshell case it's a roller case this is the largest allowed carry-on size that you can take on a normal commercial flight so it's a good test because it's something that a lot of people will use you know for all kinds of travel and something that is nice to be able to put in the back of the car so we will now see if either of these vehicles can handle a hardshell large carry-on bag and it easily fits in the Miata with quite a bit of space all around it afterwards so you could also stuff in other things here and it looks like we've got plenty of space to work with another advantage here of the Miata is that since you don't lose space by putting the top down you can still easily fit this hardshell carry-on case in the back of the car so the Lotus has a smaller boot than the Miata but if squeezed in and Tetris carefully the hardshell case can fit in the back of a Lotus Elise now I think it would be a really really tight fit if you were to do this with the soft top in the back of the car it looks like it would just clear it but one thing to note about the Elise that's a little bit different than virtually any other car because it's a Lotus there's no padding or protective material inside the trunk itself as it comes from factory and so when you're driving quickly or going around turns items at the back can shift and they can damage the rear clam of the car so it's something you want to think about when you're packing you want to pack it very carefully so that you have soft items around any hard items so that if you go hard around its corner which you should be doing it in the lease that you don't risk having objects in the back pop through crack or damage the car there's also the wiring for the rear taillights is exposed inside of the car here there's nothing around it to protect it it makes them easy to get to to service but it also means that things can bump into it knock it around and so those are things that you want to think about and be really mindful of when you're packing it you have to real think about what you place back here and you know under what circumstance it's not that it doesn't have space but you have to be really smart about what you put back here you don't want to put long metal sharp items or you know your box of knives don't put it back here if you're gonna go to the track I always take my box of knives out of the car when I go to the track but that said I think it is pretty useful information to know that you can fit a full-size large carry-on in the back of Anneliese so long as you have the top on so in a way both of these cars are winners of this test but in another more accurate way the Miata wins this test because once you place the carry-on inside the rear trunk there's still space to put additional items and put your box of knives whatever you have you can go to the track it's not going to punch a hole through the side of the car that will total it out like you can do it in the lease but on the plus side you get to take a peek at the engine whenever you play something in the boot of the car so the Lotus gets a point there our next test is something that well hardly anybody would ever think about when it comes to most cars but that is the 12-volt power port location in each of the cars and its functionality so in the Miata you would think you would think that the Miata would have a very standard 12 volt port somewhere in the middle of the car like any normal car any normal Massa but no indeed the power port in the Miata is in the passenger footwell way up deep deep into the the footwell way up there deep deep it's practically here it's here but underneath it looks guilty going and let's take a look you might be wondering why I'm on the ground well in order to access the 12 volt port on the Mazda Miata one must get on his or her knees and find the 12 volt port which is placed wait way way back here you know what I would call it it's really hard to say where this thing is there's no it's an unknown part of the foot well if you didn't know it was there you would never ever ever find it the Lotus Elise is a little bit different now this is the car you would expect to either not have a 12 volt port at all or to potentially have one in a very uncomfortable position however the power port in the Lotus Elise is simply in between the two seats in this kind of tiny rear console area so the 12 volt port and the Lotus Elise is actually much easier to access however it should be noted that there is a quirk surrounding the 12 volt port in the Elise as well because the 12 volt port supplied even in the u.s. spec Alisa's was actually the European sized plug which is slightly wider than the american-style plug and so if you place 12 volt male plugs into the female plug without modification it will not fit quite exactly right and you may have trouble with sort of intermittent power going to the plug however it is possible to swap out the female connector with an American spec and everything will fit nice and snuggly as this one has been modified to do so from a functionality standpoint the Lotus Elise wins with the 12 volt port being easy to access even though it's a little bit quirky put the Mazda well it gets style points for its colonoscopy esque 12 volt power port location and so each of them gets up next we're going to look at the cup holder situation for each of the cars the funny part is I can never remember how to put this thing in correctly cup holders were an option on the Lotus Elise but most of the cars did not come with them from the factory however in O kinetochore sector 111 did provide a cup holder an aftermarket cup holder option that's really popular and you can actually use it on either side of the car it installs with a racquetball and so you place the racket ball in the cup holder and then sort of situate it inside there and kind of move it around until it's in place getting it out of truthfully the whole thing is kind of a pain but it does work and you can have it on either side I can tend to keep it on the passenger side because I can still easily reach it from inside the car but that way it's still easier for me to get in and out of the car by placing this on the driver's side it makes it even more difficult to get in and out of the car so I often keep it on the side here so the Indy Miata as standard comes with two cupholders placed here sort of in the rear console area the owner does tell me that you know you do bump your elbow into this a bit as you're driving but it is there both cupholders can be removed and then placed back in easily without a racquetball additionally the passenger cup holder can be removed from this rear console and placed in the footwell area so that you can have a cup holder here you can then take this one out altogether if you didn't want to keep bumping into it so from a functionality standpoint the Miata clearly wins the cup holder battle but the Lotus gets a Parker style so today we compared the Indy Miata against the Lotus Elise on five important aspects of daily driving we looked at getting in and out of the car we looked at taking off the top we looked at storage space we looked at 12 volt power access and we looked at cupholders so all in all if you want to arrive in style the Lotus Elise is the clear winner if you want to arrive the Miata is the clear winner thank you so much for watching if you like this video please give it a like and a thumbs up leave a comment down below to us about what aspects of daily driving you're most interested in for a future video we're gonna keep doing more comparisons on the Miata and the Elise because I know there's a lot of interest in it tell me your experience in daily driving either Miata or Annelise and future videos we're gonna cover other aspects of daily driving both cars we're gonna look at infotainment visibility navigation fuelling fuelling for you like parking going through drive-through windows going through toll booths that's an interesting one get an EZ Pass if you have a Lotus Elise you don't want to try to pull a ticket out of the Tollbooth going through New York City just asked me how I know crowd management air conditioning infotainment service parts availability availability of technicians who know how to work on these things parking passenger comfort having passengers at all will also answer any questions that you have so leave a comment in the area down below test with your questions about how the Miata and the Elise might differ in some aspect of driving that you're curious about we will do everything we can to make that video for you and thank you for watching and live long and Lotus Fiat is always the answer the Lotus is always the answer the odd is always the answer I don't know I'm not sure either of them are the answer [Music] [Music]

Channel: AutoSugar

Views: 31,851

Rating: 4.1029186 out of 5

Keywords: lotus elise, lotus elise s2, lotus vs miata, lotus v miata, miata v lotus, miata vs lotus, lotus elise daily driver, miata nd daily driver, miata nd vs lotus elise, lotus v mazda

Id: ocAQ2QmCp4c

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/highrisedrifter]

Lotuses are great cars but famously unreliable. My own Elise was so bad I traded it in for an S5.

This isn't a good comparison. The Mazda will be far more reliable but the Lotus will look better in my opinion. The Lotus will corner like it's on rails, but the Mazda won't be a slouch in this regard.

I would say that if you just want a car you can drive without issues, the Mazda is a better choice. If you want a part-time track car with a far higher cost to own but a sublime diving experience, get the Lotus.

[u/Plaineswalker]

Daily? Uhhh Mazda. I would much rather own a Lotus but I also have to keep my job....

[u/ultrafunkmiester]

The lotus looks happier

[u/Crazehen]

Paying cash? Lotus

Financing? Miata

That's all it really comes down to. Though anyone looking for a new MX-5 should consider a 124 Spider. They're basically rotting away on dealer lots. I've seen some priced into the low 20s.

[u/sonoranelk]

The NO SHIT is Miata for daily driver. Lotus suspension is often described as 'masochist'.

[u/doneal]

No comments on what a b**** it was to get in and out of that car? I'm sorry but that would kill it for a daily immediately.

[u/hyperdriver123]

They're so vastly apart in age though it's a pointless and irrelevant video. I've got an Elise and I've had older Miatas and I wouldn't daily either lol.