At $16,950, Is This 1967 Lotus Elan SE Project Worth Whipping Out The Plastic?

The seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Lotus says, “As I collect parts and work on this Elan, it will go up in price,” but at the same time has just lowered the price by $3,500. Let’s see if the car is less incongruous than the ad.

I Need A Fun Weekend Track Car | WCSYB?

Precipitous depreciation is a feature built into almost all contemporary BMWs. As such, the rule of thumb for getting a bargain is to shop for lightly used cars still under warranty. Case in point: the 2023 BMW M8 Gran Coupe Competition we looked at last Friday was only a year old, had done just 7,500 miles, and, at $114,995, asked about two-thirds the price of what one would cost new. And it had a slew of aftermarket goodies to sweeten the deal. Unfortunately for the M8’s seller, few of you admitted to having a sweet tooth as that price tag fell in a 65 percent No Dice loss.

When Colin Chapman died of a heart attack at the far-too-young age of 54, he left behind a legacy of automotive innovation and motor racing successes. One of Chapman’s most enduring ideas was the practice of improving performance by “adding lightness.”

Today’s 1967 Lotus Elan SE is evidence of that. It weighs just under 1,500 pounds and offers performance that bests many of its more powerful contemporaries.

Well, this one would do so if it ran. I mean, it could if put in the right hands.

According to the ad, this Elan needs pretty much everything in order to be reintroduced to polite society. It’s evident from the pictures that the car will require paint, upholstery, and, at a bare minimum, a complete mechanical going-over. On the plus side, almost everything is there, and the seller claims the engine turns, so perhaps, if compression is decent, it won’t need a teardown immediately.

A fun party fact about the 1600 cc Lotus Four is that it has three camshafts. Chapaman based the engine on Ford’s sturdy Kent four block, adding Lotus’s own twin-cam cross-flow head and a new front case for the timing chains. Those two cams work in conjunction with the original Ford cam in the block, which was still needed to drive the distributor and oil pump.

When new, this Elan’s engine made around 95 horsepower and could rocket the car to sixty in under 10 seconds. Where the Elan shines, though, is in handling, and the model is often touted as one of history’s best when it comes to being light on its feet. These are so revered, in fact, that Mazda used the Elan as a benchmark when developing the original Miata.

Other mechanical elements in the Elan include a Ford-sourced four-speed manual gearbox and rear pumpkin cleverly converted from live axle to independent rear suspension featuring Chapman struts at each end. That all seems to be extant on this car, as does the backbone frame that the Elan’s fiberglass tub body sits over in saddlebag fashion.

It’s somewhat of a concern, then, that the seller notes in the ad that they have already procured a replacement frame from England that they will include in the deal for an extra $5K. The ad does claim that the original frame could be used in the car’s restoration, but if it’s intact and serviceable, why buy a new one? The seller also threatens in the ad that they will continue to noodle with the car, and the price will increase the more they do. Yeah, sure, they will.

That price is $16,950, a recent drop after getting no bites at $19K. We’ll now need to decide if that’s a more appropriate price for the car in its current condition. What do you say, is this project Elan worth $16,950 as it sits? Or, at even that reduced asking, is the bloom still off the rose?

You decide!

Los Angeles, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

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