Lotus Carlton restoration. Really good site.

[Judge Mental]

http://www.lc890g.co.uk/index.htm

If you get a spare 30 mins, give this guys restoration site a good read through. Amazing detail and the dedication needed after losing one fully rebuilt engine and gearbox along with numerous spares in a workshop fire....

[xvivalve]

Loveley cars, a consultant I work with had one when they were new for a few months until he became utterley fed up with folk blatantly trying to steal it...from home (he'd often find folk loitering, casing his place in the sticks and was up before the beak once for taking on four lads who'd broken into his garage - he had the benefit of a 9 wood helping him )...from work in the secure car park...from the Birmingham Metropole at functions where he'd park it in front of the entrance and they'd use another stolen car to shunt it out of sight...always looking for the tracker so they could come back next time to nick it properly.

Bought an Aston instead.

[Howiesprint]

I was working at Lotus when these were being produced. As Alan rightly says....loverly cars. Did'nt matter how many times you saw one and that was normally everyday at some point, it would always stop you in your tracks to gawp and listen.

I did on occasions have the pleasure of working on them even though it was only dismantling the stock GSi3000 24v model to replace it with the Lotus goodies. I was an interior trim man so it was door panels, seats and the like for me. Leather with suede inserts. It did seem a waste though how all the old parts from the stock model were just seemingly binned.

I was taken out on a test drive once as well round the Lotus test Track. Car was fresh out of the back door. Sitting in the passenger seat whilst the test driver removed his hands from the steering wheel at 100+ mph and slammed on the brakes was quite a nervous moment but great fun!! I seem to remember a certain Jonny Herbert take some Malaysian visitors (from Izuzu) round the track for a spin in one and overcooked it a bit. Ended up going straight through the wooden perimeter fence leaving a cartoonesque car shaped hole right through it!!

There was also a Lotus Astra around the site quite a lot. That was a bit special as well but never made it into production.

[1300dolly]

there is a chap in southampton who owns one and today at a garage i saw a vectra fitted with the lotus badge and a huge twin pipe sticking outta the rear when i asked i was told it belonged to a member of staff and was indeed fitted with a loutus carlton engine , box and all the other bits but the engine had blown.

[DavePoth]

Silly question, the Carlton was RWD and the Vectra is FWD isn't it? Seems like an awful lot of work to ruin a rare and valuable car.

[1300dolly]

must be a bit like putting sprint running gear into a 1300 fwd, not that i would ever consider doing such a silly thing

vectra is fwd not sure how much work it involved as they didn't go into detail. i have toyed with the idea of putting cavalier turbo 4x4 running gear into my vectra, but a cheap 4x4 cavvie turbo would be £1500 if i could find one.

[Dollyboy]

there were 2 of those in bodyshop where orange is, along with nice moggy 1000, 2 unipower GT's, few minis, a land rover and various other moderns for minor patch ups...

[Mr.Speedy]

If ever there was a car that should never be forgotten ( and it often is ) then surely the Lotus Carlton is one. New a lad who's dad bought one new when they were announced( he had a vauxhall dealership) but the bast*rd never took it out. It did look bloody fast just sitting in the garage tho'.( after we'd wiped the drool off it!)

Very high on wish list if not only to stick 2 very large fingers up in the faces of all those green lefty sandal wearing lentil chewers!

[Mr.Speedy]

I forgot to mention B*LL*CKS to the tree huggers aswell !!