Monday 12 March 2007

Elise S: £23,995. Freedom Of Speech: Priceless.

I was recently sent to Lotus's manufacturing plant in Hethel by a newspaper to drive the Elise S, this very one, in fact. It was a slightly strange assignment because the car was released about six months ago, making it prehistoric in review terms, but I'd never driven one and was keen to see the factory too, so I went. Not that I was in a position to refuse, and in any event I knew about a couple of things Lotus were doing that could prove interesting.

The most intriguing thing was their involvement in a car called the Tesla Roadster, a blindingly quick yet environmentally sound electric supercar, funded by the man who set up PayPal, apparently. So given that green is the new black, and that very little is known about the Tesla, I thought I could possibly have a scoop.

I spent the day in Hethel, which is near Norwich if you're interested, in the company of a handful of charming people, one of whom was Lotus's PR Director, who kindly agreed to sit down with me for nearly an hour answering questions. The thing was, I was only able to ask him a few things in that time because, as it turned out, he'd written the book on media management in interview situations. He even said "blue sky thinking" once, and he categorically would not give me anything useful on the Tesla, apart from to confirm they were working on it, which everybody knows.

Immediately after we'd finished I went out for a few laps on the Lotus circuit and, to my glee, on the way to the car I spotted a Tesla test mule parked up and wearing temporary plates. I promptly whipped out my camera and got the scoop, all the while under the nonchalant watch of the engineer who was taking me out to the track. He didn't seem bothered at all, and the thought even crossed my mind that they'd left it there deliberately for me.

When I returned to the newspaper the Features Editor seemed pleased with the photos, and the subsequent story would be focussed on Lotus's work in the environmental field rather than the drive in the Elise. The nice PR man delivered on his promise and hooked me up with an engine development engineer the next day, who called me and spoke at length about Lotus's environmental pioneering and such like. I didn't understand most of it, and my tape recorder only picked up the first two seconds, but it was genuinely fascinating and useful so I remembered enough avoid embarrassment. I wrote the piece, it was published, job done.

About a week later I got a voicemail from Mr PR. He wasn't happy. He was perfectly pleasant, but in an 'I'm just really disappointed with you' sort of way; the most disarming kind of criticism. If someone screams at you, you can scream back, but when they're just disappointed all you can do is apologise. I haven't, though. Yet.

The funny thing was, although my instinct was to instantly call back and ask for forgiveness, I actually began to feel quite proud of myself. See, Mr PR's disappointment had stemmed from the fact that I was invited to do one fairly journalistically redundant thing, drive an Elise, but I got there and found something much more interesting, and wrote about that instead. It seems to me that journalists are supposed to do that sort of thing, otherwise we're in a situation that liberals and punk rockers don't like - censorship. That's right.

So not only did I get my first little motoring scoop, I also won a small victory for global democracy and freedom of speech, and you really can't put a price on that.

Now, I wonder if PR people prefer flowers or chocolates?

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