Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

alan.barker wrote:Can someone 3D print them

I remember that someone posted they did just that recently.

Alan, agree totally regards the Datsun comment. Had a look at one a guy wanted restoring and ran a mile.

Lotus + 2 prices? Mate tried to sell his mid last year. Very nice car in good colour. 1973. Needed no paint or anything. Had the motor rebuilt, big valve type. Did have a ride out in it, goes great. Had it advertised for a couple of months at £15995. Loads of offers, but non in excess of £10k. Needless to say they were told where to get off. Car is now back safely covered up the garage. Going to keep it.

Regards the MOT topic above. We have a local testing station who do our MOT work and they do us an MOT check if you like. Gives us a paper saying vehicle has been checked over and is AOK. Only charges a tenner, our the customer has the knowledge the car is OK. If you check them yourself, you may just miss something.
Doesn't look like we'll be using our classics much this year in the UK?
Stay safe, Rob

Just read another part of this (long) post regarding the colour of the roof on + 2's. I can confirm all of the cars were made with a silver metal flake in the gel coat. We are just on restoring a Lotus staff and press car. These were painted met green all over. While repairing the roof the metal flake is in the gel coat under the green paint which was applied by Lotus at the factory. Don't know about any other colour of car being factory painted on the roof in the main car colour? We were told by Lotus that although the roof will be silver when we remove the green paint, the correct colour for the staff and press cars is green metallic.
Rob.

Hi Rob, thanks for the further info on metal flake roofs, very helpful. My Tawny Brown car originally had a silver metal flake roof but it was painted over at 2.5 years old and has remained covered up ever since with one extra respray in the late 90’s. Therefore there are two coats of brown and undercoat on top of the silver, and I am very keen to remove them and try to save the original finish. Any advice on how to do that would be much appreciated, I guess it’s going to be a lot of elbow grease??? Thanks, Jonathan

The Metal Flake on Roof can be Gold or Silver.
If it is Gold then it will also have Gold Sills.
My Lagoon Blue August 1973 +2S130 was Gold Flake
Alan

Hi Jonathan, no easy way really. You will probably be advised against it, but we use paint remover. The aerosol ones seem easier to control the application and you don't get it running all over the place. Just mask up the car with poly sheet or something the stuff won't eat. At least this way you wont get sanding marks in the gel coat, and a good do with G3 compound should bring up the gel a treat. Problem areas are the joint of the main body and roof and the base of the screen pillar. If it's a bond in screen, mask round the edge of the trim just on to the roof to stop the stuff going in to the trim gaps. Wish we could leave the green one with its silver roof as it would break up the car a bit. Customer wants it back to original spec with green roof. Yours being tawny, the silver should make the car 'pop' a bit more. cheers, Rob

i think all +2s with Metal Flake Roof were bonded Screens.
On my +2 i removed the Lagoon Blue paint using 2000 wet and dry.
Many times the cars were painted monotone because there was a flaw in the Metal Flake when it was removed from the Mould. As was the case on my car.
Alan

Though I haven't dug deep enough to check, I would hazard a guess that my Plus2 also had a metal flake roof that that didn't pass muster. I have pictures of the original owner with the car in all Lagoon Blue. Currently, it sports a metallic silver roof in lieu of the metal flake. The original owner purchased the car at a dealership in Atlanta, GA.

A little thread drift here, I was hoping to read some more discussions re prices.

Well, there has been a point made to the effect that owners don't set prices, they accept offers from buyers (or not).

That is a bit obvious, to be fair.

Maybe the question should have been “Should we ask more reasonable prices?”.

Take a look at Plus 2s on eBay. Nothing of any note on there below 20k. Are the sellers taking the piss? Some are, for sure (these are the cars we know have been on the market for months or years. Silver car with yellow stripe, I’m looking at you!). But is it endemic?

tonyr27 wrote:A little thread drift here, I was hoping to read some more discussions re prices.

With respect to the OP and as I mentioned previously, sellers can ask what they like for their cars but the buyers are the ones who "set the prices".

A nice mental exercise but...

Slowtus wrote:

tonyr27 wrote:A little thread drift here, I was hoping to read some more discussions re prices.

With respect to the OP and as I mentioned previously, sellers can ask what they like for their cars but the buyers are the ones who "set the prices".

A nice mental exercise but...

Paul Matty has had a Sprint up for sale at £55k for the past couple of years so I think you are right.

A mate had his 1974 130s on Car and Classic for a while at £13500 with no takers. Nice enough car in blue. New built motor, ready to use. He had someone ring about it who had just finished a resto on a white 130 and had spent £32k on it. What the.....Who spends that kind of money and then goes to sell it? Same guy offered him £10k for his car. Funny some of these Lotus guys.

M.J.S wrote:There has been a simple tool available for some time to value your +2.

Calculate total expenditure on the car, halve it, value sorted.

Funnily enough, the receipts for the rebuild(s) over the last 4 years which came with the +2S I've just bought add up to almost exactly double what I paid for it. Spooky, that. (Although you'd have to deduct the dealer's cut to get to what the person who had it rebuilt sold it for. And the original purchase price...)

We buy, sell and restore classics for a living. I've always said a car is worth what someone will pay for it at the time of sale. Restoration cost are sometimes a hole you can't dig yourself out of, once you start, you have two choices. Go forward or sell the project. We try to get through to potential customers the costs involved with body resto's. Some people don't realise how long it takes or what is involved to do a proper job. Mechanical work is easier to estimate, so I always recommend potential buyer to look for a good car bodily, or at least one they are happy to look at. I don't see any +2 being worth north of 20k, but classics are out of control at the moment, caused I think by all these TV shows that restore a basket case in and hour episode. Prices I think are in for a fall shortly, as they did a few years ago. Let's wait and see.