Lotus Elan M100

The car that lived thrice

David Milloy

There aren’t many cars that can claim to have been reborn in their original form after a hiatus in production as distinct from being a newly introduced car that merely shares the same name as the outgoing model.

The best-known reborn cars (to me, anyway) are the Lancia Montecarlo (removed from sale for two years before making a brief return), the Porsche 912 (reborn in fuel-injected guise solely for the US market after six years out of production), and the Lotus Elan M100. And of the three, the Elan is the only one to have returned to production not once but twice. Sort of.

When it was launched at the London Motorfair in 1989, the Elan (often known as the ‘M100’ to distinguish it from its earlier namesake) was a revelation. It offered performance, roadholding and handling of a level that none of its competitors were able to match, all wrapped up in a modern, stylish convertible body courtesy of designer Peter Stevens (who was also responsible for the styling of the McLaren F1 road car). Power came from a four-cylinder Isuzu engine in normally aspirated and turbocharged guises, and its front suspension featured innovative technology patented by Lotus.

It sounds great, and it was.

But there was a problem. The Elan had – shock, horror – front-wheel drive. This didn’t sit well with the sort of sports car aficionados who regarded themselves as Alpha Males. These chest-wigged medallion men bemoaned both the Elan’s insistence on going exactly where its driver aimed it without any fuss or histrionics and its steadfast refusal to even consider dislodging its occupant’s fillings on less than ideal road surfaces. In a world in which mediocrity was – and is – celebrated, the little Lotus was derided for being too good.

They naysayers were missing the point, though. John Miles, a Lotus development engineer who had driven for Team Lotus in F1, explained that Lotus had always designed its cars to go where they were pointed and the Elan was simply the latest expression of that ethos. It was, he said, designed to replicate in its era the performance advantage which its namesake had enjoyed in the 60s and 70s.

That Lotus had succeeded in that objective was evident to pretty much anyone who didn’t sit on their brains. The Design Council gave Lotus an award, and Autocar & Motor magazine said that the Elan was the world’s first front-wheel drive supercar. The same magazine even went as far as to suggest to readers that they should sell everything, including their families (and, yes, even their grannies), if that enabled them to buy an Elan.

As it turned out, though, the Elan’s biggest enemy was not prejudice, but the economy. Lotus’s initial plans had called for the Elan to hit the market with a price tag of £16,000. But when deliveries began in 1990, the cheapest Elan (the normally aspirated version) had an on-the-road price of over £18,000, with the turbocharged SE version coming in at just over £20,000. That might not have been an insurmountable problem had the Elan’s launch not coincided with the onset of a global recession. As budgets were tightened and belts were trimmed, £20,000 sports cars became a luxury that few were prepared to purchase.

The net result of this, in tandem with the first Gulf War and the falling dollar, meant that sales fell well short of Lotus’s target figure of 3,000 per year. Lotus was bleeding money and so was its parent company, General Motors. It wasn’t a situation that could continue, and it didn’t. As General Motors sought to sell off Lotus, Elan production ended in July 1992. Just 3855 Elans had been built, all but about 130 of them being the more powerful SE model.

That looked to be the end of the Elan’s story, but it was soon to make the best comeback since Elvis.

The catalyst for its rebirth was the sale of Lotus in 1993 to a company controlled by Romano Artioli, who also owned Bugatti. The story goes that when Artioli visited the Lotus factory at Hethel he was surprised to see several hundred engines and gearboxes sitting idly in crates. These, he was told, had been destined for the Elan but became surplus to requirements when production ceased. With the engines and gearboxes having already been paid for and with the economy now in a better state, Artioli decided that the Elan would re-enter production as a limited-run Series 2 model.

It was relaunched in June 1994, with production continuing into 1995. In its Series 2 guise, the Elan featured larger alloy wheels, a catalytic converter (which robbed it of 10 bhp), and a number of minor changes. It was a little slower than before but had arguably even better roadholding. And in spite of its price having risen to over £24,000 in 1994, it sold well.

Even so, its return was only ever intended to be a brief one, as Lotus was in the process of developing a cheaper back to basics sports car, the Elise. When the last of the 800 Series 2 Elans rolled off the production line at Hethel, that seemed to be that.

But it wasn’t. Rather than destroy the tooling used to make the Elan, Lotus offered it – and the rights to produce the Elan (though not the Elan name itself) – for sale. It was hoped that a British buyer would be found but in the end the tooling was shipped to Korea, home of its new owners, Kia.

And sure enough, the Elan was reborn again but this time it wore a Kia badge and had Kia running gear. Produced only in left-hand drive form, the Vigato (as it was now known in some markets; it was called the Roadster in others) went on sale in 1996, although it was never officially imported to the UK.

The Kia ‘Elan’ retained the head-turning looks of the Lotus original but couldn’t match either its pace or finesse. It was less expensive to buy, though, and it probably wouldn’t be unfair to describe it as a ‘budget Elan’. It too was destined to have a short production life, becoming a victim of Kia’s bankruptcy and subsequent acquisition by Hyundai in the late 1990s.

The Elan may well be the best car Lotus ever built. In addition to its dynamic qualities, it offered ample room for people and luggage, looked like nothing else on the road, and was reliable, putting those who claim that Lotus is an acronym for Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious firmly in their place.

Today, there are around 600 Elans still on the road in the UK, with probably twice that number on SORN, and perhaps at least that many again still being used or in storage worldwide. It’s an old car now but its looks have lasted. It’s a dream to drive too, being rapid when you need it to be and very sure-footed in both the dry and, unlike certain other convertible sports cars I could mention, the wet. Best of all, you can pick up a good one without breaking the bank.

And as the marketing blurb used to run: above all, it’s a Lotus.