Where have all the Bourne bodied cars gone?

[440HUU]

As you all know, the Elan production started using bodies manufactured by S Bourne & Co (Plastics) Ltd of Nottingham, England.

These bodies are identified by:

1. An identification plate fixed to the vertical bulkhead in the engine compartment and is stamped with the body number

2. A grey pigment was used in the gel coat and resin, so that the engine compartment, interior of the bootlid and all glassed surfaces were grey in colour.

It is impossible to establish definitely how made Bourne bodyshells were manufactured, but due to chronic supply and quality problems, it is unlikely that more than 200 bodies were actually produced by Bourne even though the original contract was for 1000.

So where have all the Bourne bodied cars gone?

Please let me know if you have one of these cars. I suspect that many have been broken up but it would be fascinating to have an idea of how many still exist. I would be grateful if you would supply the body number from the bulkhead plaque. Sometimes the plaque is missing but two tell tale holes remain. In addition, please let me have from the identification plate the unit number which is scribed at 90 degrees to the chassis number and engine number.

Would really welcome responses to this question please

[twincamman]

you must be looking for another 25 page discussion - ----ed

[garyeanderson]

[mazlot]

Mine is listed in there

[cabc26b]

I know they (bourne) lasted into the mid 300's - A man who bacame my friend via the lotus connection owned an S1 that he bought new in Texas -

It had the bourne tag on the firewall - It was also painted an Ivory white ( OEW maybe...)

I lived in the same town with him for 7 years and I don't think the car left the garage once in that time.... it had lost none of the bitza's that make restoring the early cars a pain...

[garyeanderson]

I copied this off the internet at some point its of 26/0206, at least that is what I wrote when I saw it.

Gary

[gordont]

Chassis 260198 / Engine LP663

Is being restored in Sydney Australia by my brother Peter Taylor.

Originally brought to Australia, Brisbane in the 70's off the raod since then. Purchased last year by my brother and now being restored.

Still has the Bourne plate on tha car

cheers

[1964 S1]

Mine's on that missing page near the end. Unit 3463, eng#1132. It's a LHD export. A month missing, Lotus sleight of hand?

[garyeanderson]

Hi Eric

I believe that Frank has most (all?) of the early records but is missing the later Sprints. These happened to be the ones that were posted because he was being very gracious and answering peoples questions indivually. My guess is he saw where it was leading and stopped doing it as it was not his job to be the Lotus Historian. Frank said at the time that he was working on getting them all transcribed and that he did with the .pdf Link posted in my first reply) that is on his web page. He has your engine listed as LP 1182, there are other errors on it also like the month/day switch on some of them. 8552 lines for the Elan will do that, not including all of the other Lotus models that are there too.
50 out of the 908 lines in the spread sheet are blank except for the unit number from the begining to 3900, I wonder if these are shell replacement for accident write offs or 26r shells or what.

Gary

[garyeanderson]

Chassis 260198 / Engine LP663

Is being restored in Sydney Australia by my brother Peter Taylor.

Originally brought to Australia, Brisbane in the 70's off the raod since then. Purchased last year by my brother and now being restored.

Still has the Bourne plate on tha car

cheers

Hi gordon

Is this your brothers Elan? Looks like a lot of work but pretty straight.

[gordont]

no that is not his, but if you look photo gallery at the clublotus dot com dot au site that car is now fully restored and red.

will post some pics of Peter car when I get a chance.

[types26/36]

From a post I made a long time ago
http://www.lotuselan.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13526

[elansprint71]

Brian,
You clearly don't need that plate, I think you should donate it to me so that I can fit it to my genuine original 26R BRM Ian Walker Border Reivers Shapecraft 1972 Sprint.

[garyeanderson]

I was trying to open a new topic

[twincamman]

FWIW looking at the engine list I bought engine #LP-7062LBA from Doug Fairchilds 63 OR 64 elan after it was crashed in 1983--but being a canadian car perhaps it wont be on the list ---ed