lotus promotional dvd distributed through mail

[masheen]

my cubicle neighbour (who i accidentally saw at a track event once and that's how we really met) gave me a promotional CD on lotus cars he got in the mail.

on the cover it says "are you a lotus driver?" in the top right corner and "change the rules" in the bottom right corner. the front cover has a front quarter-view of a dark gray elise and the rear cover, appropriately, has a rear quarter-view of, this time, a red elise (or is one of them exige, i can't remember).

one sentence summary of the contents (it's a dvd video): i really wish it was longer.

and now more detail.

it consists of several segments: which are, if i remember correctly, and not necessarily in the order, and not necessarily the terms they used : elise, exige, philosophy, manufacturing, heritage, cars.

the segments on the elise and exige are couple of minutes long each. they are not very forceful - which i like. don't have much marketing language -- good also. mainly some quick shots.

the bit i liked the best, and it repeats in several of the segements, is the shot (and sound of course), from the back, of an orange elise launching with rear wheels partially on gravel shoulder and partially on the pavement. there is tires spinning and gravel flying, but the reason i like this bit is that you can hear that they are launching the car with the engine speed bouncing of the rev limiter. and then the very next shot, with the sound seemingly spaning the two shots, is the same car continuing its take-off down a twisty road through the woods, and again the characteristics rev limiter sound before the shift into second.

felt like watching an instructional video to me.

they had couple of important lotus people make some statements - nick adams, others. what i thought about was the couple of times various lotus people weaved into their talks the statements how elise/exige are great road and track cars. which made me think that i could not make such statements in their place, even though i'd be motivated to. couldn't because they are less than great road cars and more than great track cars. maybe i should add, "in my opinion". or even the better way to put it, is that the line of compromises is just where i would want to put it, for a sports car.

another interesting thing is that they sprinkled the elise and exige segements with magazine quotes.

i also really liked, when the whole dvd is taken into account, the total of all the shots of the manufacturing facilities showing the elises beeing built, painted, etc, and the shots of lotus cars through history and the little story bits about what made them important. actually, they had a whole segment on lotus cars from first to last (with many skipped). but like i said, i just wish there was more of all that, especially the scenes with all the lotus cars through history - they were such short cuts. and there was material on lotus firsts in racing.

the person that gave me the dvd speculates that he got it because he has a subscription to autoweek. the dvd had the address of our local lotus dealership stamped on it.

anybody else came across something like this?

[habendanio]

Is there a way to upload the video to youtube or similar?

[rnr]

http://elisetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24196

Brandon S sent me one

[habendanio]

So know one setup a torrent or something that can be downloaded? I'd hate to ask someone to mail it if it could be downloaded. Weird how lotus does'nt actively promote their cars better online.

[choi0706]

any chance you could rip it?

[rnr]

Could you suggest a good freeware ripper for Windows?

[SweetDaddyD]

I like the paint scene. The jig is cool and it's like an expanded elise holding all the parts in postition. 3 guys spray out the car in a couple minutes. Didn't notice if they missed under the bottom of the part above the rear window in the video or not. lol, but I havn't seen an Elise that has had it painted yet.

[babak]

I got one from my dealer a few months ago. It's mostly a rehash of the Lotus Victory by Design DVD.

[masheen]

i will think about a way to make this more available.

[kohete]

I picked one up from SVAG.

[AgentTripleX]

All the dealers got one, so if you want one, just come on in.