Hey guys,
Thx for the input, I was excited when I saw some responses to my thread as I thought some local guys had responded with offers to see their cars but your input was still good. I actually have been able to get hold of local guy with a red s4 that he said I could see but I'll have to wait another week as he's out of town. Hopefully I'll get more local responses but we'll see.
As for your comments, red has always been one of the colors that imagined owning an Esprit in and indeed I've been talking to one of our members about their red 98 over the past month or so that they are selling. It definitely seems like a well sorted vehicle, I just would really like to see one in person in that color.
I have driven a local silver one for sale which also looked very cool in person. That was primarily the reason why I figured I really needed to see colors in person as the car looked really quite different in person even though I had seen like a zillion pictures, lol.
As far as impressions I was overall pleasantly surprised given everything I had read. I'm 6ft and although I am in my 40's I'm pretty athletic and weigh in at 165lb so not a big guy in that respect. I actually found the car very easy to get in and out of. I was quite happy with the seating position. I like to recline a bit when driving and was quite happy that I could bring the seat forward and recline the back and still comfortably reach the pedals, in fact I felt I needed the seat forward a bit for the pedals to be where I wanted them. As for pedal spacing, yes they are close but I really didn't have issue with them. I tend to be a converse kind of guy and if I have sneakers on they are generally not a big chunky design so not really an issue and I'm a size 12.
Overall I found the car easy to drive given I'd never driven one. Clutch took a little while to get used to and I was still getting used to it but it was just a ten minute test drive and I felt that it would be fine once I owned one and got used to it more. I actually found visibility to be much better than I expected. I didn't need to reverse at all, lol, but at the same time i didn't feel like I was blind to everything around me, to be honest it was such a none issue that I didn't even really think about it.
It would be nice to drive multiple to compare but that's a luxury that may not be afforded to me, but at least I know fundamentally that I can most certainly live with this vehicle. Most likely I'll have one in the next month so we'll find out
Thx again for all your input.
Jerry