I've had both. Although my Elise was not supercharged it here are the pros:
The car has a 1.8l toyota powerplant. I was able to get all the tune up parts, all the service parts from Autozone such as K&N air filter, plugs, oil, antifreeze, and I often bled the brakes and changed the tranny fluids as I tracked the car often. The parts were fairly inexpensive and the car is fairly easy to maintain as well.
My car was saffron yellow so the attention was so overwhelming that I chose to drive the car at night if I wasn't tracking it. If I took it somewhere, there were several occasions where people would always take cell phone clips. I once walked out of a restaurant and caught a hot lady posing in front of the car taking a picture of herself. The attention just got down right annoying especially if you're kind of car shy as I would describe myself.
Tracking the car was a great experience. Best feedback out of any car. Has AP racing brakes out of the factory and weighs in at 1900 lbs. Hell it comes out of the factory with soft yokohama tires. It is one of those cars that is still new in a way, and in stock form you can rail it hard on the track, brake super late, and I never had overheating issues. The car always ran great, never lean, etc etc. Now you will pass cars in the turns and twisties, but the car on straightaways will lose steam and I believe the standard elise has a top speed of 145 m.p.h. The motor has a "second cam" which is like Vtech that kicked in a little passed 6k rpm's.
The cons about the elise for me is getting out of the car. The car is incredibly, incredibly small compared to other cars. I had a rare gull wing style aftermarket roof that allowed me to enter and exit the car easily. But still you need to be a gymnast who is double jointed, to get in and out of the car. The insurance is average for a sports car. But the Elise is easily salvageable since the front clam and rear clam are one piece, and most of the car is glued together. Seriously. If you get in an incident where you slightly bump or back into an object then the insurance company will most likely total the car. Which is a good thing for myself, because I would like to find another salvaged elise and turn it into a track car. Aftermarket carbon fiber front and rear clams are around $1800ish.
Still after I sold my elise my buddies always asked which car I liked better. And I always answered the NSX simply because if you're a car guy, you know after short seat time in an NSX that it was put together by hand, from some disciplined Japanese dudes. Which just gives the car so much soul.
