Oh, and if you do finance an Elise, never borrow the full amount. Your Elise will depreciate far faster than you can pay off the loan, so if you ever have to sell the car and pay off the loan, you could be left short. In the early months/years of a (common high-street bank unsecured) loan, your payment is mostly paying off the interest, not the principal. Psychologically, you think you own far more of the car than you really do, but really you don't catch up until later.
Make sure you've always at least a few grand ahead of the loan settlement figure in terms of equity. If you can't afford to put down £3-4k on a £15k car (for example), you'd better be damned sure you're not going to sell the car before the loan is paid off, so make sure you've got fresh batteries in your crystal ball!
The web is littered with loan-calculators which shows how the graph of paying off a capital-repayment loan is NOT a straight line from the loan amount down to zero over the duration of the loan. Worth getting your head round if you haven't already.
Of course, if like me you've got a good friend to constantly taunt you with the nickname 'Captain Sensible', you'll eventually get an Elise anyway and won't regret it for a minute!
