Lotus Elite, Eclat and Excel E-Book

Matthew Vale

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Lotus introduced the Type 75 Elite in 1974. Being a full four-seater coupe with an opening glass tailgate, it was designed to carry a family in comfort while retaining Lotus' trademark, excellent road holding and handling. Perhaps most importantly, it was the first - and successful - step in Colin Chapman's plan to move upmarket and away from Lotus' kit car image. The Elite gave rise to two derivatives, the Eclat and the Excel. The Eclat was a restyled coupe version, sacrificing the Elite's unique rear styling and good rear passenger headroom for a more stylish exterior. With its conventional coupe styling, the Eclat was more mainstream than the Elite, and it was in the end the better seller. In turn, the Eclat spawned the Excel, the last of the Elite-inspired family. Matthew Vale looks at the history of these unusual Lotus models, and gives a thorough guide to buying and owning the cars today. Of interest to all motoring enthusiasts and Lotus owners in particular, it includes information on buying and owning the cars today, specifications, owner's experiences and technical information. Superbly illustrated with 130 colour photographs, both period and contemporary.

Leseprobe

Lotus Elite, Eclat and Excel

An Enthusiast’s Guide

Matthew Vale

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2016 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Matthew Vale 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 079 9

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Mike Kimberley, formally Chief Engineer and CEO of Lotus, and Mike Taylor of Lotusbits for taking the time to be interviewed and photographed by me. Also, many thanks to John Walsh, Martin Bradley, Tony Poll and Leigh Greenham for allowing me to interview them and photograph their cars, and The Oxfordshire Golf Hotel and Spa for the use of their site for photography of Leigh’s Elite. And of course thanks to my long-suffering wife Julia and daughter Lizzy for putting up with me disappearing into my study to write this book. Thanks to Group Lotus PLC for permission to use various images throughout the book.

Lotus press images courtesy of Group Lotus plc.

Nomenclature

In some sources, including some – but not all – published by Lotus, ‘Eclat’ is rendered as ‘Éclat’. However, as the majority of sources do not use the accent, ‘Eclat’ without an accent has been used throughout for the sake of consistency.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 BACKGROUND TO THE LOTUS ELITE

CHAPTER 2 DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LOTUS ELITE AND ECLAT

CHAPTER 3 THE ECLAT – PRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 4 THE LOTUS TYPE 89 EXCEL (1982–1992)

CHAPTER 5 OWNING AND RUNNING

Index

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND TO THE LOTUS ELITE

INTRODUCTION

The Lotus Type 75 Elite was introduced in May 1974 and was a four-seat GT car aimed at the discerning, well-off, middle-aged driver who needed a car with four full-sized seats to carry one’s family or business associates but also wanted the good performance, handling and roadholding that had always marked out Lotus’s previous offerings. In a way the new Elite was a logical progression from the Elan Plus 2; another view was that it was a radical first step into the luxury car market for Lotus. Either way, the Elite was a bold move both in car size and market position for Lotus, and Lotus wanted to capitalize on the larger margins that could be made on a car that was a size up from the Elan.

While the Elite retained Lotus’s ‘trade mark’ pop-up headlights, its styling was completely different to previous Lotus models. In the 1970s the latest styling trend was for an aerodynamic wedge shape, along with a lot more straight lines and fewer curves. The Elite adopted these trends to produce a startlingly up to date appearance, with a low, smooth front blending into the higher cabin area which maintained its line to the back of the car, giving plenty of passenger headroom and a clean two-box shape. The styling was enhanced by the use of a near vertical, clean cut-off at the rear, with the rear window doubling up as a hatchback – a look first seen in the Reliant Scimitar GTE and which suited the Elite, but this feature did make for a somewhat ‘heavy’ looking rear quarter. Although it only had two doors, their length and wide opening made access to the heavily sculptured rear seats relatively easy. The Elite had active and passive safety built into the design, with excellent handling and roadholding and an extremely strong passenger cabin.

The Elite was a four-seater, two-door coupé with sports car handling and performance while cosseting its passengers. The car had distinctive styling and took Lotus upmarket. GROUP LOTUS PLC

The Elite was powered by Lotus’s own state-of-the-art, 2-litre, twin-cam motor. With twin carbs the engine put out some 160bhp to give the Elite adequate performance.

The Elite was equipped with the then new Lotus 907 engine, a state-of-the-art, 2-litre, 4-cylinder, 16-valve double overhead cam unit. This was coupled to Lotus’s own five-speed gearbox which used Austin Maxi internals to give good if not spectacular performance, with a 0–60mph time of 7–8sec and a top speed of 125–128mph (201–206km/h). Fuel consumption was very good for the size and performance of the car at 26–28mpg (10.9–10.1ltr/100km), a result of the car’s light weight – its unladen weight was only 2,450lb (1,111kg) – efficient engine and good aerodynamics.

The Elite gave rise to two derivatives, the Eclat and the Excel. The Eclat was a restyled coupé version, sacrificing the Elite’s unique rear styling and good rear passenger headroom for a more stylish exterior. With its more conventional coupé styling, the Eclat was more mainstream than the Elite and was in the end a better seller, spawning the Excel, the last of the Elite-inspired family.

THE DON SAFETY TROPHY

First awarded in 1965, the Don Safety Trophy aimed to ‘promote the continuing development of vehicle safety standards through good engineering design and innovation; to encourage the use of such new developments and to acclaim those who advance these aims’. The trophy was presented yearly to a vehicle or component manufacturer that met these aims and in 1975 the Lotus Elite was the recipient.

Originally conceived by Don International Ltd, a subsidiary of Manchester-based Small & Parkes (a vehicle component manufacturer that still manufactures commercial vehicle brake components under the TMD Friction Group), the Don Trophy was an important driver of vehicle safety during the 1960s and 1970s. A panel of safety experts considered entries from all car manufacturers, but all the entries had to be in production and being used regularly at the time of submission, so this was a serious attempt to reward actual exponents of safety.

The Elite won the trophy in the year after the car was launched, and joined other worthy winning British cars such as the Range Rover (1970), the Jaguar XJ6 (1968) and the Jensen FF (1965). The award based on the many safety features that were incorporated into the design of the Elite, including the strong passenger cell (the ‘ring of steel’); door beams; rollover protection; front and rear impact absorbing bumpers; inertia reel seat belts; and many other features leading to the car exceeding many international safety standards by 100 per cent.

The original press release stated:

Whilst recognizing the limited clientele for the Elite owing to its price and the sporting type of vehicle it represents, the Panel nevertheless felt the successful use of GRP body construction plus the wide margin by which the Elite meets the US and European legal and safety requirements and the emphasis placed on reduction of the risk of fire in the case of a collision, allied to good fuel economy and low emission of pollutants, added up to a substantial improvement, in terms of both primary and secondary safety in a high performance car.

Another telling line from the citation stated that:

Many manufacturers go to great lengths to show the public pictures of cars repeatedly hitting concrete walls. From the conception of the Elite, Lotus concentrated their attention equally to designing the car in such a way that it can avoid hitting walls in the first place and provide the secondary safety structure just in case the wall moves!

The award gives details of the results of the Elite’s crash tests in terms of what the standards permit and what the Elite achieved (see table below).

The Don Trophy was awarded to the Elite as a result of the attention paid to passive and active safety in the car’s design.

Type of test

Required result

Lotus Elite result

1) Steering wheel displacement in 30mph barrier collision

Maximum permissible: 5in (12.7cm)

0.5in (1.27cm)

2) Roof crush resistance when subject to 1.5 times vehicle weight

Maximum allowable deflection of 5in (12.7cm)

3in (7.62cm)

3) Side impact resistance rigidly in place – force needed to deflect door by 6in (15.24cm)

2,250lb (1,020.6kg)

3,400lb (1,542.24kg)

4) Side impact resistance – force needed to deflect door by 12in (30.48cm)

3,500lb (1,587.6kg)

4,700lb (2,131.92kg)

5) Peak force (i.e. door failure)

4,774lb (2,165.48kg)

8,200lb (3,719.52kg)

All in all the figures were pretty impressive and Lotus certainly deserved to win the Don Trophy with the Elite.

The first evolution of the Elite was the Eclat, which replaced the Elite’s rear hatch with a conventional boot and had coupé styling. GROUP LOTUS PLC

The Elite on the right is partnered by a pair of later Excels.

The Excel, launched in 1983, replaced both the Eclat and the Elite, and was a 2+2 with a lightly restyled Eclat type exterior, retaining the coupé outline and having a significant number of mechanical improvements under the skin, mostly taken from the Toyota parts bin. The Excel remained in production until 1992 and was generally considered to be the car that the Elite and Eclat should have been from the start – a refined and sophisticated car that could compete head-on with the best of the world’s competition.

The table below gives the timeline of the Elite family of cars, showing the dates of the launch and end of production of the various models in the range.

Car

Event

Date

Elite

Announcement

June 1974

Elite

First customer delivery

December 1974

Elite

US launch

Late 1974/early 1975

Eclat

Launch announcement

October 1975

Elite 504 (Automatic)

Launch

October 1975

Eclat 504 (Automatic)

Launch and available

Early 1976

US Market Eclat (Sprint)

US launch

Mid-1976

UK Market Eclat Sprint

UK launch

1977

Elite and Eclat S2.2

UK launch

1980

Elite and Eclat Riviera

UK launch

1981

Eclat Excel

UK launch

Oct 1982

Eclat SE

UK launch

Nov 1983

Eclat

End of production

1992

A Personal Interest

The author must confess to some personal interest in the Elite. When it was released I was impressed with its unique styling and appreciated the performance and economy given by the Lotus engine, and in the late 1980s my father actually bought a silver Series 1 Eclat. When he asked a family friend who was a car nut (Jaguar E-Type and Aston Martin DB2) and eminent engineer for advice he was told ‘Don’t do it’ followed by ‘If you must, make sure all the fluids are kept up to the correct level all the time’ – sage advice for anyone running a classic. The Eclat was not a success; my father really enjoyed driving it and appreciated the performance and handling but it had reached the age where it had had a couple of careful owners and a lot of careless ones, who had spent nothing on maintaining it and abused it roundly. It really needed a sympathetic owner who had deep pockets; Dad was pretty good about doing what needed to be done to it but recognized that it needed a lot more time and effort spent on it than he was prepared to put in. It didn’t help that my mother was less than impressed with it as well, so he part-exchanged it for a new 2.0i MG Maestro which actually proved to be a very good car.

The final member of the Elite family was the Excel. This model was extensively modified mechanically from the original Elite, and took on the Eclat’s coupé styling.

LOTUS MODEL NUMBERING

Throughout this book there are references to various Lotus ‘Type’ numbers – such as the ‘Lotus Elite Type 75’. All Lotus cars, be they road or racing models, were assigned a type number, starting retrospectively at 1. The first of the four-seat Elites was Type 75 and the Eclat was Type 76. The following table gives the type numbers of those cars relevant to the Elite story.

Type no.

Model

Production years

Notes

14

Elite (Original)

1957–61

The original Lotus Elite

26

Elan S1 and S2

1962–64

Early open top Elans

36

Elan S3 and S4 FHC

1965–72

Elan Fixed Head Coupé

45

Elan S3 and S4 DHC

1966–72

Last of the baby open Elan

50

Elan Plus 2

1968–74

Predecessor of the Elite

75

Elite

1975–79

Retrospectively both

76

Eclat

1975–79

known as Series 1

83

Elite Series 2.2

1980–82

Badged as Series 2.2 to

84

Eclat Series 2.2

1980–82

reflect increased engine size

89

Excel

1982–92

Last incarnation of the four-seater Lotus family

The front end of the Eclat was identical to the Elite. The black grill at the front of the bonnet ducted hot air away from the radiator, which was buried in the nose.

Many years later in the early 2010s I bought a bright yellow automatic Elite 504 (from Lotusbits – see Chapter 5) as a project. It was a nice car, which had had a new chassis fitted, but needed a complete suspension overhaul and a good tidy up. While I completed the suspension work successfully, unfortunately I didn’t have the time to get the car fully up together and had the offer of a Lotus Elan Plus 2 project so I had to sell it on. But I still retain a soft spot for the Elite and was severely tempted by offers of various project cars from Mike Taylor of Lotusbits when I visited him to interview him for this book.

LOTUS THE COMPANY

Racing Pedigree

The origins of the Lotus Company date back to the late 1940s when engineer and entrepreneur Colin Anthony Bruce Chapman built a couple of Austin Seven-based trials specials in the stables behind his father’s pub in Tottenham, north London. After leaving the RAF in 1949 and joining the civil engineering firm Cousins, followed by a quick move to a better paid job at the British Aluminium Company, Chapman produced a single-seater sports car aimed directly at motor racing built to the 750 Motor Club racing rules. The Lotus Mark III won numerous races in the 1950 season and on the back of such success the Lotus Engineering Company was set up in July 1952, with Chapman and his future wife Hazel Williams as the directors. A range of sports/racing cars were produced by the company through the early 1950s, always made in limited numbers, culminating in the Lotus VI which was much more successful, and was supplied in kit form to avoid tax.

The Lotus VI is considered by some to be the first ‘real’ Lotus as it was the first of Chapman’s cars to have a Lotus-designed chassis, rather than the modified Austin Seven chassis used in the previous cars. Even at this early stage in his career, Chapman had demonstrated the important traits that would influence all of his future designs:

add lightness

make things do more than one job if possible

interpret the rule book to your advantage.

Early examples of ‘adding lightness’ included the use of aluminium for all bodywork – which as well as being light was easily worked, widely available and relatively cheap – and the Mark VI’s light and strong tubular chassis. Making things do two or more jobs was demonstrated by the use of the tubular body frame to brace the Austin Seven chassis of his first Mark III. Chapman’s elegant interpretation of the rule books included the clever modification of the standard Austin Seven engine’s two-port head into a four-port head to give a significant power boost in the Lotus Mark III, and the selling of cars in kit form to enable his customers to legally avoid paying car tax.

The first serious ‘production’ Lotus was the VI. This was a simple car with proprietary mechanicals but using a Lotusdesigned, tubular space-frame chassis and alloy bodywork.

Production of the Lotus VI continued through the 1950s, and with production approaching 100 gave Lotus some financial stability. Post 1955 the VI was replaced with the sports racing VIII, IX, X and 11 (note that Lotus changed to Arabic numbering with the ‘11’), and the pure racer Mark 12, which was designed to compete in Formula 1 and 2.

MIKE KIMBERLEY – FATHER OF THE LOTUS ELITE