Lotus Elise S1

First impressions when you walk up to the Lotus Elise is how small it is. It is a great looking car, but when close up it somehow doesn't look right.
With the roof off, getting in and out is no problem, open the door, step in and slide yourself down behind the steering wheel. Once in, it is relatively comfortable, the leather sports seats are supportive, plenty of head room and quite spacious, considering the size of the car. The interior is very sparce, no carpets, stereo, elctric windows, air conditioning etc. Just a race spec instrument panel showing the basics.
On the road, the 118bhp 1.8ltr mid-engined K-series Rover engine is powerful enough to keep you smiling. You do, however, have to make the most of the cars superb handling to keep more powerful hot hatches at bay. The Elise is very short on power when the speed increases, after 80mph, most hot hatches will reel the Elise in on the straights. But when the road gets twisty, not many cars will be able to keep up.
There are some major downsides to owning a car like the Elise. The car is so small that a lot of road users may not see you coming and that low driving position makes it very dificult to see over objects that wouldn't pose any problem in any other type of car, e.g. long grass at side of road or roundabouts. The roof, when the roof is on it is very difficult to get in and out of and you'll end up covered in bruises doing so. The roof is a get you home item and leaks quite badly.
The noise, it is very noisy driving around in the Elise, the engine is right behind you ears (and it's not a nice sounding engine) and the rigid chassis rattles and bangs.
But when you actually drive this car all it's faults are instantly forgotten as the horns push out of your skull and the driving experience leaves you smiling for hours afterwards.
Summary
If you are looking for a Summer toy then there is no better car for the money. It is a great handling car with blistering performance which will make any man into a race driver for the day. It looks great and everyone loves this car.

Fiat Stilo Schumacher

Michael Schumacher was undoubtedly the most succesful Formula One driver ever and to celebrate this, Fiat (who own a large chunk of Ferrari) decided a commerative model would be launched.
Schumacher had a major part to play in the development of the Ferrari F430, so you would have thought this might have been a good choice to say thank you to their best employee.
No, Fiat decided that they would use a Fiat Stilo. Hmm, odd choice, not exactly the car that springs to mind when deciding which car should bear the great man's signature.
The basic idea was to take a humble Fiat Stilo paint it with actual Ferrari paint and change a few specs on the car and sell a limited number of them. Fair enough, but different countries chose different models to base their 'special edition' on. Some even chose the five door version. Luckily for us, Fiat UK used the Fiat Stilo Abarth for the donor car.
The UK car had the 2.4ltr 5 cylinder engine which produces 170 bhp. They put a Zender bodykit on the car, changed the interior slightly and painted the car Ferrari red, it is the same colour as the F430.
It is by no means a quick car, 0-62mph is around 8 secs and a top speed of about 135mph. But what this car is, is a decent GT car. Very comfortable to cruise along on long journeys with plenty of grunt for overtaking when the need arises.
On long journeys the fuel consumption reaches around 32mpg, but if your pottering around town you'll be lucky to see the good side of 23mpg. the car uses a lot of oil, 1ltr per 1000 miles, so you need to keep a check on that, although the car does have a lot of engine monitors which will let you know early enough if you forget to top up.
The car is a head turner, people stare as you drive by and when parked up you see them trying to look for the badge to see what it is.
For me though, I think Fiat missed a great PR opportunity when they decided to launch this variation of the Stilo. With their Ferrari colleagues, I would have thought that they would have made an engine fitting of the Schumacher name, The Abarth engine is a good one, but a Stilo with a Ferrari designed/tuned engine along with a better interior would have been a more fitting tribute to the seven times World Champion.
Fiat Uk recognised this and for £1000 added to the list price, you could have the car with lowered suspension, 18" wheels and a twin DTM style rear exhaust silencer. For me that isn't really worth it. On British roads and especially in town the standard car is better suited to life with multi story car parks and traffic calming.
Summary
A very good car for very little money, looks just as good as it's twice as expensive rivals and has more features.