The Lotus Grand Tourers

On The Lotus Grand Tourers Facebook group, Brian Angus posted this picture with his story of taking three Excels to Goodyear:

“Excel Testing at Goodyear Mireval Test Track. Cars arriving from UK at Mireval on transporter.“



“This test session was mainly to do cooling tests on the new HC version of the 912 N/A engine. We also had the new Excel SE rear wing to assess. Myself and Dave Minter were at Mireval for a week. The transporter brought 3 cars from Hethel. Two were for the Lotus sales department who were hosting a dealer event. The white car was our engineering car. The sales event was over the weekend and Dave & I were fortunate to be included in the 'Dealer Jolly' which included some good hospitality events (eating & fishing!). I have some more pictures which I will post later. I remember we had to go to a Toyota dealer in Sete to purchase some more brake pads after a long session on the track. We were hoping to get a visit from the Goodyear Airship but high winds stopped it appearing.”

Saw that, Richard. Was a great thread. I see he's also posted a couple of pictures of an early Excel with fuel injection in a cold chamber for testing. Unfortunately, as Mile Kimberley explained in the comments, a world recession meant there was no funding to introduce it into production. I never knew Lotus were testing fuel injection on the 4-cylinders so early.

Hi Trevor, yes I saw about the fuel injection cold chamber tests in the mid eighties. I spoke to Mike yesterday and as he said they couldn’t get funding for the project, even though it would have opened up the US market. Even more sadly he told me he fought hard to introduce fuel injection in the early eighties for the Eclat Excel, which was turned down for similar reasons even though that would have allowed them to enter the US market even earlier with the car.

Cheers, Richard

Any ideas of the year of the photo of the trailer above?

I think I may have owned the White one on the back!!!

I purchased my first Excel and later found out that it had been an engineering car for Lotus and should never have been sold!! One very expensive engine rebuild later

Here she is below looking distinctly like the one pictured on the trailer.......

I think they were the first SE cars, so 1985 I expect. I believe the production SEs had the spats on the rear wheel arch - did yours have these?

Cheers, Richard

No, it had no spats on the back and that is what leads me to believe that the car on the transporter could be the same car as mine pictured above.

It was a C plate first registered in August 1985 so around the right time to be an early one?

Just found the original facebook thread and it has confirmed what i thought, it was indeed my first excel..........



Here she is with my second excel..........