TonyL

Beatiful. I love the brown. it's one of the few 70s colours that hasn't been revived (purple being another that comes to mind) which makes it look very 70s.

Well you two would know better than me - I haven't had my Excel long enough for the Toyota door handles to become a problem. My thoughts were based around the memory of my uncle's & grandfather's Marinas, in the 70s, neither of which were great cars, & also the notion that 1980s Japanese engineering must surely beat anything British Leyland could manage to create. I also recall a passage in an Ian Banks novel I read around 20 years ago, in which the protagonist explains his frustration with his poorly designed BL door handles. Back onto the original theme of the thread, & Grizzly's idea to cut in the hatchback section of an Elite: I think this could look good & be a great car, but it would look like an Excel with a hatchback, rather than an Elite, which is what the OP was after. & you'd need to change the shape of the Elite side windows or the Excel's door windows to get them to work together. If I had the time & ability (& I don't have either at the moment) I would love to have a go at this. I'd also move the fuel tank, ditch the rear bulkhead & back seats, & put in a new bulkhead, with a parcel shelf, behind the front seats (these would now be the only seats), to create a sporty two seater estate car that I could carry my mountain bike in. I suspect, by the time my fantasy project was road worthy again, my mountain biking days would be over. Grizzly, I've enjoyed reading your posts about your project on the other forum. I hope to meet you & see your car some time. I'm not too far from you (Chobham). Is your car going to run on Speedline wheels?

If you’re going to take Grizzly’s advice on sticking the Elite back end top bit onto your Excel, then I’m sure there are a lot of people who’d be very keen to hear how you get on. You can’t stop there though. The Elite doors are different & are an important part of the Elite look. The Excel’s Toyota door handles look much better than the Elite’s Marina door handles, so maybe think about how you could carry those over. They’re a similar design, just neater. The Elite bonnet is different. You could probably get away with leaving the Excel bonnet on, but the Elite bonnet looks better to me. It’s not just the vents – the Elite bonnet is lower. You’d need to swap out the Excel’s very 80’s front bumper & spoiler, as well, of course, & fit the Elite rear bumper too. You’ll end up with 15” wheels, but that gives you a better choice of performance tyre, anyway, & I think the Excel SE Speedlines (if that’s what you have) would look really good on an Elite, although I’ve never seen an Elite with Speedlines. Are you thinking your Excel-Elite won’t have the polished Aluminium (or whatever it is) around the around the windscreen & side windows? I’ve seen a good few Elite “chrome delete” pictures with body colour or black trim, & none of them looks right. Also, I’m not so sure the Excel’s 944 arch flares are going to suite an Elite. They might, but they say “1980s” to me, & I think if you want the car to look like an Elite (on the outside), you need to weed out just about every 1980s detail. From the body swap stories I’ve read, I think everyone ends up with the Elite dashboard (please correct me if I’m wrong). I’d prefer the Excel SE dashboard, although neither dashboard is very good. There’s more discussion on this topic over on lotusexcel.net. Grizzly, I'm looking forward to hearing how your finished project car drives. Soon, I hope.

It's taken me a while, but here I am, updating Nick & Sparky's thread. I'm the new owner of Nick's Excel. I plan to put a good few miles on the car, just to make sure it's right for me, before I make a lot of changes, but I have a short list of jobs I'm keen to tackle as soon as I have time. I have already replaced the tyres with some TR1s & had them balanced on a Hunter Road Force machine. I bought an extra wheel on ebay & asked my wheel balance man to choose the best four wheels out of the five I gave him (the spare that came with the car is no good), so now I have three dark gold wheels & one silver, to further enhance the car's run down appearance. Next, I will see about replacing the driver's seat, which is a bit bendy. I'm sure it could be fixed, but even if it were good as new, it would still be no good, because these seats are too far off the floor, which means my head is near the top of the windscreen & the steering wheel is down in my lap. I have a pair of Recaro Pole Positions that came from a track car, so I'll see about putting one, or both, of those in, & I'll probably fit a steering wheel spacer too. I must also deal with the gear knob. It's the original wooden gear knob, & I really like it, but it spins freely on the gearstick (annoying) & rattles like mad as I go past 6,000 RPM - it's a good stand in for a shift light. & the last thing on my urgent jobs list will be to cover up the tan coloured dashboard top, which reflects in the windscreen & DRIVES ME MAD. I plan to stick an offcut of black alcantara on there for now, as I don't want to think about a proper re-trim for the time being. I'm not at all bothered about the poor paint. I'll fix the rattly doors, but I'm not going to do anything with the bodywork until I'm happy with everything else. I quite like the distressed look. I'll update this thread every now & again, but I expect my posts will be few & far between over the next 12-18 months, as I have a lot on at work. Hopefully, in 18 months' time, I'll be retired, or at least semi-retired, & I'll be able to spend more time playing with cars & doing all the other things I enjoy.

It's sad to hear you're thinking of selling. I enjoyed reading your thread when I came across it two or three months ago. I'm guessing this is a cost of living crisis moment, rather than sudden dissatisfaction with the car. None of the experts has offered an opinion, so I'll offer mine & perhaps that will encourage the others. I've been looking at Excel ads for a few months now, since finding myself with no Lotus for the first time in many years, & deciding an Excel would be the one to go for if I can move one of my other cars on, to free up a space in a garage. I saw a couple advertised at just under £6,000 & they both looked a lot better than yours, although I suspect neither would have had nearly so much recent mechanical attention as yours. With this in mind, I don't think you're going to get close to £6,000. I would also think it would take more than £6k further spending to get your car up to the standard of the two cars that have been on ebay for quite some time now, at £11k & £13k. If money's tight (as you mentioned in your long thread), perhaps the best thing to do would be to put it away somewhere dry & come back to it at a later date.

Yes, the forum software isn't very good - I'm trying to reply to your post, & my previous post comes up in the reply box. I've sent you a message, so if you can't see it, reply to this post, & hopefully we'll establish private comms somehow or other.

@Conceptwho. Did you see my post in the "Wanted>Evora S wanted" thread, regarding my Evora GP Edition, which I'll be selling soon? Please send me a message, if you'd like to come & have a look. I'm in Chobham GU24.

I'll be selling mine when my new car arrives, in May. It's a GP Edition. I think there were 12 of these, & just three are in the UK. The mileage will be around 44,000 by the time I come to sell it. It has the later Alpine head unit, with higher res screen & volume knob, instead of the stupid +/- volume buttons the earlier cars have. Bluetooth (works for music – not just phone calls). Steering wheel, etc is black, rather than bare metal. Alcantara seats (much better than horrible slippery leather). Folding mirrors, reverse camera. Sports/tech/touring or whatever the three packs were called weren’t options on the GP Editions. I think these came with everything (apart from the folding mirrors, which I added). The black paint is really lovely (Motorsport Black). If you park next to one of the regular black Evoras, it makes the other car look grey. The gold stripes & lettering are sprayed on (they’re not stickers). This includes the gold LOTUS & model designation on the back – so you don’t have the problem of cleaning around those stuck on letters. I’ve had the car since 2015. It was last serviced in May 2021 at 42,100 miles. That’s not many miles in the past few months, but I inherited a McLaren when my dad died last year, so I’ve been clocking up some miles, in that. I've attached a couple of pictures. Since these were taken, I've changed the big wheels for some 18"/19" Lotus forged wheels (also gold); these are lighter & stronger than the 19"/20"s pictured & the car drives much better on them too. I still have the 19"/20" set, & I'll sell whichever set the new owner doesn't want, once the car has gone. PS. I'm in Chobham, so not too far from you, JKL.

I have one of these. I use it nearly every day. It came with a whole load of problems, but they've all been sorted out, & I'm very happy with it now. It's an MY11, but it's one of the last, & you get suedtex seats (so much better than slippery leather) + black dash & black steering wheel - but it's still the (much better) MY11 thin wheel. Unfortunately, you still have the old style doors with door pins & the old style seals. The off-white trim on the inside of the A-pillars annoys me (sun visors too) & I'm intending to get these trimmed when I can find the time (MY12 are black inside). Motorsport black is a much better colour than starlight black - it's darker. The previous owner of mine had the mirrors painted black (good decision). If you're thinking about peeling some of the stripes off to tone it down a bit then think again - they're sprayed on at the factory. The "Lotus" & "Evora S" lettering are spayed onto the back of the car - an improvement on the plastic stick-ons that you can never clean around easily. I was told there are only 3 UK GP Edition cars. The main question to ask is, "do I want to pay a little more, & wait goodness knows how long, for a nice MY12 to come up?". I didn't want anything other than red, black or BRG, & my girlfiend loved the stripes, so I went for it.

It's got to be worth changing the seats if you think you're otherwise happy with the car. I've changed the seats in a few of my cars (993, 360, Elise, Caterham) - sometimes for comfort seats from another model & other times for a fixed back race seat. I completely fell in love with my Ferrari 360 after I changed the seats (it was a disappointment up to then) - I bought some Recora Pole Positions from ebay, & got a local engineering firm to modify the sliding mounting plates to fit. I will probably get around to changing my Evora seats when I can find the time, as I think they are a real weak point - fine for a long motorway journey, but rubbish for twisty roads. Re insurance: if you decide to ask your insurance company and they say "no", Competition Car Insurance will offer cover.

370Z manual does it for you - I'm not sure whether there's a button to tun it off. I prefer doing it myself too, but as I mentioned in another thread, it's more difficult to H&T in an Evora than any other car I've ever owned, because the brakes are very over assisted, & just the smallest change in pressure on the brake pedal makes a big difference to the braking effect, so it's difficult to control the brake & blip the throttle at the same time.

I can’t understand why some people are getting so upset about the low speed transmission noise – it’s not a fault – it’s just a consequence of the design that’s been employed, & it only lasts a couple of seconds each time. I like it – reminds me of my old 3.2 911. I get to drive a 12C every now & again. Very nice, & it’s easy to see why these cost 2-3 times as much as an Evora. If I could have a McLaren 540 with a manual gear box then I’d want one very badly, but as I can’t, I’m very happy with my Evora S, & I should think the convertible 400 will be my next big purchase, in several years’ time.

There was a red LHD (MY12?) at Bell & Colvill when I was there yesterday.

Thanks for the tip - I had wondered about those highlighted names.

Sorry to ask the same question again - thought I'd try quoting you this time, Jim, in the hope that you'll get an email & see my question, below. Jim, Can you give me some advice on my Evora S please? I was planning to do whatever needs doing (disconnect & plug a tube, I think) so my exhaust flap would be open all the time - I never use sport mode because I don't like the throttle map. If I do this, am I going to lose significant torque/power/MPG? My car is one of the last MY11s & the dealer told me it has an MY12 exhaust. This would be just while I save up for one of yours, of course.