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My Renault 5 Turbo 2 had one. Fitted by a company in London in the 1980s: the sticker was still on it with their "01..." telephone number. You can see it here. Rather than a proper metal sliding sunroof (like my Integrale above), it was only a tinted glass tilt affair. After washing the car, you had to do a few miles of spirited motoring before you opened it, otherwise you and your passenger would get a lap full of water. Even then it was wise to drive with a chamois leather on your lap. In reality it was quite handy, because with both it and the rear side windows open, you got a through-put of fresh air to clear the engine fumes from the cabin. It also helped hold up with sagging headlining until I had that professionally replaced. However, come re-sale time the sunroof was a real no-no. Some potential buyers were even factoring in the cost of fitting a whole new roof panel on what was otherwise a pretty mint example of the marque. The same goes for the seats: having put up with the useless R5 GTL sourced originals for a few years, I decided to bin them off and get some grippy new Corbeau sports recliners, prior to our honeymoon trip to Corsica. This made the driving experience infinitely better, with the seat holding you in place rather than having to hang on to the steering wheel when cornering. Nevertheless, come re-sale time, once again this was a major black mark against the car. Still it sold at a lower price in the end (to a guy who drove it all the way back from Luton Airport to Madrid), so I hope he enjoyed it. Just goes to show that you should only modify your car if you're prepared to significantly reduce its value, or can reinstate it prior to sale.

BBC website report says this is just a "show nose" for the publicity photograph and initial testing. I think we can expect something far uglier come Race 1.

New Evora reg. eeny, meeny, miney, mo...

I was surprised to discover that none of the major UK broadcasters are covering the event this year. No BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5, Sky or even new boy BT Sport. I can only see it listed on Eurosport: that's a niche channel that I don't think anyone has watched since the 1990s!

OK probably JLR then.

Has the BBC News website used a photo of a Lotus worker and V6 to illustrate the UK's booming economy in 2014 (according to the IMF at least)? I'd post up the link, but I never seem to manage that on TLF.

Am I reading that right? The highest altitude the spacecraft has achieved to date on test flights is now 71,000 feet? But they are still expecting to take passengers up to around 350,000 feet before the end of this year? Apparently they haven't even been granted a licence to carry passengers. Maybe I'll just hold on to my deposit for a few more months...

Well if the supply of original style headlamps has dried up, maybe Lotus will be forced to bring out a face-lift Evora with a new design of headlamps from another poor mug, sorry, supplier. Either that or see if there's a market out there for a special kind of supercar which you can only drive in the daylight.

That holiday photo must be Costa Teguise, Lanzarote. We stayed in an almost identical villa a couple of years ago. I think we ended up with the ubiquitous Seat Ibiza.

The same number for the rest of their careers, eh? I think Vettel had already had that idea!

Don't forget Triumph!

The ticket prices for this event are far too expensive for the general public. On the day tickets would cost 124 quid for a family of four in a car. In comparison that same family could turn up on the Sunday at Race Retro next month and pay a gate price of 50 quid all-in.

If correct, those UK sales figures are frightening too. According to the Lotus website they have 10 official UK dealers. Those unofficial internet figures show that in 2012 those 10 companies shared out a paltry 24 new Evora sales and in 2013 that rose to 37, which still equates to an average of less than one Evora sale per Quarter per dealer. In reality I expect that the bulk of those 37 cars were sold by the Top 3 or 4 dealers, so most of the other 6 or 7 dealers probably sold well below that average. That's hardly good business. Sadly a good car doesn't necessarily sell well. It reminds me of the Renault Alpine A610: despite being an excellent alternative to a 911 and a documented favourite of Jeremy Clarkson, Renault used to sell about 6 of them each year in the UK and eventually dropped the marque altogether (only now resuscitating it). No wonder little old MVS struggled to sell any of their brilliant Venturis here. As car enthusiasts we like to think of the typical UK sports car buyer being a bit more broad-minded than those in other countries, but when push comes to shove, the vast majority still end up spending their hard-earned on the usual suspects. Maybe that particular market sector is no longer viable for Lotus without a hugely epxensive marketing push?

I got talking to the owner of a red Lamborghini Silhouette at a car show last summer. It was chassis #1 and had been imported from mainland Europe (I think the first owner was in France). It had some cool details such as speakers in the headrests!

I think the act of selling any nice car comes with a certain degree of remorse. I've owned over half a dozen fairly special cars for periods of anything from 1 to 14 years and yet do miss them all when they eventually go. Since I'm not the Sultan of Brunei, the only way I can try to scratch the next itch is by selling a car first. I'm still left with the memories, some photos and the knowledge that I've ticked another one off my wish list. Might be a few more years before I finally land that Lamborghini Jalpa though....

We've only owned ours a couple of months and I've only driven it a hundred-odd miles, so I'm not yet in a position to give an answer to the OP yet. However, the other day I was pottering about doing a household chore, which required fetching something out of the garage. I opened the garage door and was genuinely shocked to see the rump of this supercar sitting where my Passat used to be! I'd momentarily forgotten all about it!

I've owned 15 cars since I took my test. They dated from 1970 to 2011: all of them were manuals. I doubt this pattern will change unless I lose the use of my left leg, or get a job with tedious stop-start traffic commuting. I have never felt at home in an automatic. It's the lack of engine braking and over-reliance on the middle pedal that bothers me. As a youngster I used to do a 25 mile cross-country commute, sometimes without ever touching the foot-brake: not because I am some sort of driving God, but because the front callipers used to stick on after one application and I had to free them off again with a brick-end at journey's end! Try doing that in an auto and you'd be in the ditch at the first bend. I'm also not keen on holding a stationary vehicle on the foot-brake, whilst it wants to creep forward. My experience of a flappy paddle auto is limited to a couple of days in a hired 2012 DSG Passat. Unless you were in Sport mode It had this terrible habit of cutting the engine when you backed off (fuel economy gone mad), meaning that any attempt at accelerating was met with a second's hesitancy as you pressed the throttle, restarted the engine and got it back up to revs: not what you want on the Autobahn or when overtaking. Conversely in Sport mode, it became tiresome as it always seemed to only want to change up at the red line. There was no doubt that the changes themselves were quick and seamless but it wasn't for me. I still think we have a generation's worth of manual enthusiasts on our roads, who would opt for the stick shift, but thereafter who knows? Demand for manual classic cars still outstrips that for automatics, but I guess that could change too.

Front-engined Miura???

Must have been bladdered if he couldn't manage the brake test in an Evora. I'd liked to have seen him try reversing into a parking space. Even sober it's not for the faint-hearted!

Purely from an outsider's point of view, I expect that sales had dropped primarily due to the perception that the company might not survive and the negative effect that this would have on after-sales servicing, warranty, spare parts availability, residuals etc.. When spending 60K-odd on a new car, that's a perfectly understandable reaction and there are a number of examples of this occurring to other manufacturers in recent history. The default (i.e. boring and predictable) choice for potential Lotus buyers then becomes Porsche. What the current Lotus owners now need to do is tell the world that the company is here to stay, market the existing range better whilst developing the range sensibly; i.e. not just never-ending facelifts/renaming like Rover and not 5 new cars simultaneously like Mr Bahar. I don't think it is correct to say that Lotus is not making what customers want: for example they must have benefitted more than most from the track-day boom of the past 15 years or so, and the road cars are pretty much universally lauded in the press. The fact that UK sales have been so poor means that the marque still retains the exclusivity that others have since lost. With the UK apparently coming out of recession, maybe this is the ideal time for a Lotus renaissance?

It's a big problem for F1, just like the tedious Schumacher years. We had a relatively interesting period in between with various champions, but that's all gone now. Tinkering with the points system, as they have done from time to time, is not going to change the fact that the same man won the last 8 races and amassed a total of 12 victories from 18 races. It's total domination of the sport and he's still young enough to carry on for a good deal longer yet. One thing that has changed is the remarkable reliability of the cars these days. The need to make engines (and tyres!) last longer and the lower rpm limit introduced a few seasons ago makes engine failures fairly uncommon these days. Maybe the complications of the new untried turbocharged units will spice that aspect up a little in 2014.To be honest if we hadn't had the Pirelli problems this year, the spectacle would have been even more boring (although it seems that much of these issues were caused by the teams, rather than the tyre manufacturer).

Silly season's well under way: after watering of the track, gold, silver, bronze medals et al, we now have double points for the last race in Abu Dhabi. So Vettel would have won by an even bigger margin if that policy had been in place in 2013! My suggestion: drop Free Practice 3 on Saturday mornings, which no-one outside of the pit-lane is interested in anyway and have a slightly earlier Qualifying followed by an afternoon Sprint race of say half distance for half points with no compulsory pit stops. This would increase the Saturday ratings on TV and at the circuit, without adding any extra track time to the schedule. It might also give the smaller teams a chance of snatching the odd podium and maybe reduce the dull tyre preservation tactics of a Sunday race. Over to the FIA then.

There were plenty of rear/mid-engined cars without grilles for obvious reasons (Beetle, Imp, NSU Prinz, Renault 8, 911, Fiat 500, 126, Lancia Delta S4 Stradale etc). As for front-engine cars, that was an 1980s fad: perhaps the most obvious mainstream model was the Ford Sierra: some models in the range did have grilles but most didn't. Prior to that Vauxhall had the Avanti-esque Chevette and Mark 1 Carlton. Then there were those companies who used this feature for that other dubious 1980s design fad of bodykits. These tended to be just blocked off grilles like the V8 Vantage above, The Tickford Capri and some ghastly German tuner creations spring to mind. Even my Lotus Omega only has a post box slot orifice compared to the standard Vauxhall's proper grille.

I've got one of each and don't have any preference as to which is "better" to drive, but the following excerpt from that wiki article is the bit I've never been able to get my head round: "Japan does allow both right hand drive and left hand drive vehicles on its roads. In some cases, especially foreign models, available in both configurations, as left hand drive is seen as a status symbol, not only in the case of German models, but also British ones, despite the UK being a right hand drive market.[120] Some models like the Ford Explorer are now only available in left hand drive, despite being available in right hand drive in other markets, on account of it being seen as an American product." What sort of person deliberately inconveniences themselves and the enjoyment of their purchase by specifying a brand new LHD car to drive on the left, when exactly the same car is available in RHD??? Nuts.

Sounds like this guy has pretty poor form then. This one looks like the work of a 1980s Coventry Polytechnic student. Nasty.