The Lotus Grand Tourers

Through the register were building, I now have eyes on around 275 Excels. Total production I believe is about 2000, so around 1 in 8.
Of these 275 cars:
Only 38% are properly registered as Excels.
44% Eclat
13% Eclat Excel.
The remaining 5% are a mix. One is just "Lotus" and at least 3 are registered as Elite !! - Two of these 'Elites' are pretending to be Celebrations - All very strange.

There's no real correlation between age and the title used, but the use of 'Eclat Excel' seems to peak around the MY 86 / SE variants at 25%.

I'll post a greater breakdown by model type if I can work out how to turn a screen print into a file I can post.

Tony

MetBlue wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 18, 2022 10:47

I'll post a greater breakdown by model type if I can work out how to turn a screen print into a file I can post.

Try shift prt scrn
open your editor (irfanview or whatever)
ctrl V
(Mine's supposedly an eclat excel se from 3/85 )

Hi Tony,

I have the production numbers here if i can figure out the best way to post them:

https://imgbox.com/C4bc30xR

That's the easiest picture I've ever posted, using imgbox.

Just click www.imgbox.com

Click "upload image" (orange box at top)

Navigate to the image on your computer

Click "Open" to upload.

imgbox provides the location of the image you just uploaded. Cut and paste the BB-Code or Links Only into your post, submit to Forum and its done

MetBlue wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 18, 2022 10:47

I'll post a greater breakdown by model type if I can work out how to turn a screen print into a file I can post.

Tony

Hi Tony, assuming you’re using a windows pc and have Word, then a reasonably quick and easy way is to

Use print screen (Prnt Scrn) to capture info on screen
Open Word blank document
Right click on document and click paste - should add screen capture to document
Right click on the image within the document
Choose “save picture as”
Should bring up normal File save box
Browse to where you want to save image and give it a name, then on “save as type” click to open drop down menu and choose jpg and save.
Then it’s just a case of uploading to where you store photos to add to the forum and posting as normal

Gray14 wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 18, 2022 14:37

Hi Tony,

I have the production numbers here if i can figure out the best way to post them:

https://imgbox.com/C4bc30xR

What is the source of your numbers as this isn’t really correct in terms of what the production numbers of the models are. The Eclat ceased production when the Excel was introduced in 1982, so the numbers you have listed for 82 will include Eclat and Excels (Eclat Excels). Then all the 83, 84, 85 numbers are going to be Excels ( with maybe the odd Lotus anomaly), so should be listed under Excel, not Eclat.
This is the issue with how the Excels were registered as either Eclat, Eclat Excel or Excel. Matthew Vale’s book has probably one of the most accurate list of production numbers which shows 2158 Excels and a total of 6212 of all models from Elite to Excel.

Just to be absolutely clear, the numbers in the first post on this thread all relate to Excels (i.e. cars registered after 82 using Toyota bits).
From the table posted above, if you take the 750 odd cars showing as Eclat in 83,84 & 85, you're pretty close to the 2158 Excels Alan states.
Thanks for the hints on screen prints. I'll take a go later.

Tony

Isn't there a "How to post images" thread somewhere?

To add my suggestion, if you have a modern Windows machine, save your file into your OneDrive, wait a few minutes foir it to sync up to the cloud and then go to onedrive on the web, sign in to your Microsoft Account, and find the image, select the Embed from the menu at the top of the screen, and generate the link (change to the relevant size) and copy the link. Sounds a bit of a faff if you haven't done this before, but it becomes second nature. Doesn't have to be just pictures, can be any file - so a spreadsheet would be fine.

There's a similar process via Google Drive (and I assume Apple as well).

I think that the different methods discussed here for posting pictures aren’t so different after all. They all involve uploading the image to your personal cloud storage location (e.g. onedrive) then pasting the link into your post. Clumsy sometimes, but at least the pictures are there when you need to refer to them unlike Facebook where images and posts can become difficult to locate after a while. I find it far easier to post images using my iPad than my PC. The other limitation here is that the images only survive for as long as you keep them in your personal storage location.

The other forum many of us use is TLF which imposes a limit on the space used for images for non paying members, but if you’re within the limit or do pay then it is a dead simple copy and paste.

In the past the consensus has been that we should not introduce subscription fees for the forum, even though these would allow us to pay for the additional space and bandwidth used by the forum that would be required for native image hosting.

Anyway interesting work on the model statistics. If Matthew Vale’s figure for Excel production is accurate, and if my arithmetic is correct, it would imply that 70 Eclats were produced in 1982 - quite a jump from the 1981 production number.

Cheers, Richard

richardw wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 19, 2022 10:00

Anyway interesting work on the model statistics. If Matthew Vale’s figure for Excel production is accurate, and if my arithmetic is correct, it would imply that 70 Eclats were produced in 1982 - quite a jump from the 1981 production number.

Cheers, Richard

Vale shows 13 Elite S2.2 and 31 Eclat S2.2 in 81 and 14 Elite S2.2 and 91 Eclat S2.2 in 82 and 1 Elite S2.2 in 83

Thanks for the hints on creating the JPG.
Maybe it's time I upgraded my home version of Word, which is a little pre historic and doesn't have the option to save a picture as a jpg file. Good job my work PC is more up to date

Finally here is the wider summary ( DVLA registered name in the %age table towards the bottom):



Tony

Nice work, interesting to see how many on the road etc.

Would also be really nice to see an addition column for the SA

I wrote to Lotus back in 2003 over this, Ive copied the letter here cos it clears things up. Great work dude, very interesting.


Bash

My car was both built and registered in 1992 and is listed as an Eclat, not Eclat Excel.

The far right column on the table is headed 'post Celebration and is likely the group your car is in. I see few patterns in the registered names except that Eclat Excel was little used towards the end.
Tony