New Car (Shonky Lotus Content)

[duncs500]

Well, I sold the Exige to help buy our first house, and I sold the Seven to help buy the house we moved into last September. Obviously, I made sure this time that we got a garage with the place, and in general while our first house seemed like a stepping stone, this place feels like somewhere we have no plans to move from for a long time (if ever).

Obviously having an empty garage has become increasingly stressful for me. I inevitably starting thinking about cars earlier in the year, but with the added complication of the wife getting pregnant in March, so I was trying to think about four seat options. The problem with that was, try as I could there just wasn't anything that really excited me that wasn't way more than I could afford, and as I'm just arriving at being debt free (except mortgage obvs) I wanted to enjoy the extra cash in my pocket rather than borrowing more.

So in the end I canned the four seat idea, and just started looking at cars that excited me but also wouldn't put me back in debt. To be honest, there was only really one choice that I kept coming back to.

So here we go:



It's a 1998 S1, with 92k miles on it. It's had a new engine and has a few rough edges. The weird thing is that's part of the appeal, in the past I've had relatively low mileage mint cars, and have always had one eye on the resale and house deposits. This car is here to stay, I don't care how many miles I put on it, and how much of a Trigger's broom it ends up being.

There are lots of great things about the car too: it's had quite a lot of money spent on it recently, there's a £6k bill from a couple of years ago, and some other big bills. Although the engine has 30k odd miles on it, it has only had a couple of thousand in the car, it's had the desirable S2 suspension upgrade also with only a couple of thousand miles on it. It's only a couple of owner car, same owner for the last 11 years.

I bought it from Will Blackham who many people will know of, and has a great rep. He was an absolute pleasure to deal with, and someone who exudes passion for Lotus. He seemed so excited about the car, maybe just his sales patter, but said when he first looked at it it was a bit dusty, but when he cleaned it up he was amazed just how good it was for the miles. I got in there quick, showed my interest before he'd even collected it, and looked at it the day after he got it, but he said he could have sold it several times over in the 5 days it was in his possession.

Picked it up yesterday, and I'm totally smitten with it already.

TL;DR: I bought a shonky leggy old Lotus.

[speedingfine]

Brilliant news Duncs I am very jealous, I've been looking at S1 classifieds for months myself!

Edit. Moar pix please

[Sundayjumper]

Yay !!!

[Rich B]

Love it - good work mate!

[Coaster1]

Win

[Foz]

Not much lotus love round here

S1 Elise is a lovely little thing, good colour as well

[V8Granite]

That’s a lovely car and your logic for using it and getting an already played with one is bang on.

Dave!

[duncs500]

A few more pics:

[ZedLeg]

Looks good Duncs.

How long before you send it to Dan for a K20 swap?

[duncs500]

It's got a year's MOT, so there's not a massive amount it needs to enjoy the rest of the summer, but the little things that I'll start look at first are:

- Blower isn't working, could be a fuse, could need replacing, there's a guide on SELOC for how to do it. Might leave it until winter.
- Needs a new radio aerial.
- Although it past its MOT so not super urgent, lights are past their best.

[duncs500]

Looks good Duncs.

How long before you send it to Dan for a K20 swap?

Whenever the K goes pop!

Hopefully the car will give me time to save up.

[Sundayjumper]

OT - paint the walls & floor of your garage. White walls make it much brighter and floor paint will keep the dust down.

[duncs500]

In terms of driving impressions, it's obviously got a typical Lotus feel, but it does have quite a different feel to the Exige in ways that you can probably imagine. Steering is lighter, and ride is noticeably better (certainly at lower speeds), still got that great Lotus blend of ride and control.

Not fast by any stretch, but is nippy enough in second and third to be great fun in the lower speed twisties.

Took me a few miles to tune into it, it's one of those cars that feels a bit clunky if you're too tentative with it, but smooths out once you get confident and push on. Gear change works really well 2nd to 4th, but I was finding that slotting 5th seemed a bit slower, couldn't really get it in a smooth action and seemed more of an up, across, up as opposed to a light smooth action. Hopefully others with S1 experience will tell me whether they're all like that or just mine?

[duncs500]

OT - paint the walls & floor of your garage. White walls make it much brighter and floor paint will keep the dust down.

Yeah, been toying with it (see house upgrades thread), but that floor is so dusty I feel like paint will just peel off. I've tried cleaning it, and it is better, but there is still loads of laitance on it as you can see from my tyres. Also, when I read up on paint options almost all of them seemed to have problems unless done on a proper scabbled surface.

[JonMad]

OT - paint the walls & floor of your garage. White walls make it much brighter and floor paint will keep the dust down.

Yeah, been toying with it (see house upgrades thread), but that floor is so dusty I feel like paint will just peel off. I've tried cleaning it, and it is better, but there is still loads of laitance on it as you can see from my tyres. Also, when I read up on paint options almost all of them seemed to have problems unless done on a proper scabbled surface.

That's a lovely car Duncs and I admire your logic to end up with a 2 seater.

Re garages, mine is very dusty. I've started painting a little of the walls white but only got so far.
I've been looking at this Resincoat stuff https://www.resincoat.co.uk - lots of examples on their Instagram. The only challenge for me - that you may not have - is completely clearing the garage out for 24hours or more to get it all down in one go.

[John]

Very nice

[duncs500]

OT - paint the walls & floor of your garage. White walls make it much brighter and floor paint will keep the dust down.

Yeah, been toying with it (see house upgrades thread), but that floor is so dusty I feel like paint will just peel off. I've tried cleaning it, and it is better, but there is still loads of laitance on it as you can see from my tyres. Also, when I read up on paint options almost all of them seemed to have problems unless done on a proper scabbled surface.

That's a lovely car Duncs and I admire your logic to end up with a 2 seater.

Re garages, mine is very dusty. I've started painting a little of the walls white but only got so far.
I've been looking at this Resincoat stuff https://www.resincoat.co.uk - lots of examples on their Instagram. The only challenge for me - that you may not have - is completely clearing the garage out for 24hours or more to get it all down in one go.

I like the way you say "I admire your logic". The way I look at it, it's my hobby, it won't get the family trips that maybe say a 911 could, but even then could you fill an 911 with enough baby stuff for a weekend? I kind of think about it like a motorbike, more of a personal thing now than a thing to do as a family.

Yeah, I looked at that resincoat too, really mixed reviews so I'm worried that it'll just peel up without really good prep.

[GG.]

Looks ace, Duncs - positively luxurious compared to the 7!

Almost looks like you can fit another one in that garage

[duncs500]

Looks ace, Duncs - positively luxurious compared to the 7!

Almost looks like you can fit another one in that garage

Probably could, it's not even that close to the back wall. I'd definitely give up a bit of length for some more width.

Going to get shelves and tools set up down the back once I've got some cash.

[Sundayjumper]

My garage floor was quite old concrete and covered with all manner of stains (oo-err) but a coat of Screwfix own-label paint worked really well.

01E36250-4F06-49FB-AA76-11949B701D85.jpg (94.53 KiB) Viewed 2281 times

Having checked, that was almost eight years ago now. It’s dirty & faded since then but no problem with flaking. You have make sure you work it in to the concrete. Takes bloody ages.