1969 Lotus Elan

An unrestored but impeccably maintained car that has been in the same ownership since 1984, this French Blue Elan S4 SE is so original that it even sits on its factory chassis. The good news continues with the fact that it it’s a ‘matching numbers’ car with the paperwork, engine and chassis numbers all agreeing. Nice.

Appropriately enough for a Lotus of this colour, this UK-registered car has recently been driven back from France where it has been in storage for the last quarter of a century. But please don’t think it was just sitting there abandoned because nothing could be further from the truth: it was stored in a dry garage, under a dust cover, and rested on a set of spare wheels.

It was roused from its slumber in April 2022 to undergo an extensive recommissioning process followed by a “spirited” 400-mile shakedown back to the UK, which unearthed a few minor issues, all of which were resolved.

While it has never had a full restoration, the Elan has seen a comprehensive programme of work over the years (details in a later section) and it is said to have done “less than a few than a few thousand miles since much of this work was carried out.”

It’s important to note that this ongoing maintenance means that the patina it proudly wears is essentially that of an unrestored car, which we like; after all, a car is only original once.

The French Blue coachwork is in a good condition, presenting very well from six feet and only slightly less well up close. The panels all fit as well as any we’ve seen on an Elan, and the doors all open and close and fit as they should.

The blue colour suits the car’s lines and is, to our mind at least, a much more interesting shade than some of the more common hues you tend to see on the model. There’s enough chrome to add interest too, but not so much as to be vulgar. It is, like everything on the Elan, perfectly judged.

The hood is in a very good condition and has been “relatively well fitted” according to the car’s enthusiast owner, which is not to damn with faint praise as they never fitted very well even when the cars were new. The hood frame and tonneau are also excellent and a set of laminated instructions are included.

The diminutive 13-inch black centre-lock wheels are in great shape and fitted with matching Dunlop SP10 tyres. And you all know by now how we feel about matching tyres.

The pop-up headlamps work correctly with only a minor leak in the vacuum actuation system which causes the lights to droop some 15 mins after stopping the engine. The lights remain fully open at all times with the engine running. This is a common problem and one we could live with.

Work to do is minor: there are the inevitable gel coat cracks and chips that are normal on an unrestored fiberglass vehicle of this age; they might bother some but we would much prefer to see a car presented as honestly as this one, leaving the tricky decisions as to whether to conserve, preserve or restore to the car’s new owner.

Also, while the windscreen rubber and trim strip have been recently replaced the windscreen is starting to delaminate. It also has two small cracks in the lower corners. None of these issues affects visibility but we can see the Elan’s new owner might like to splash out the £200 or so that would be required to fit a new one.

Further patina comes via some of the chrome trim, which is weathered. It’s not bad at all but we couldn’t disagree with your judgement if you chose to have the boot hinges, interior door handles, wheel knock-on spinners and one of the Elan badges sorted out.

Worst of all are the side window frames, which have some pitting that will not polish out; the owner feels that “re-chroming them would be a luxury” but then if the last couple of years has shown us anything it’s that we should treat ourselves now because none of us knows what’s around the corner…

This rear nearside light lens has a small crack. New ones are available, albeit at a price. Again, we’d live with it if it were ours.

Finally, there is quite a deep vertical scratch in one of the side windows where a stone has been trapped in the electric window mechanism. New glass is available but it will be rather expensive in the tinted version to match the other windows.

The interior is in an excellent condition. The seats were retrimmed and the carpets were replaced in the mid-eighties, the same period when the original dashboard was re-veneered and re-decaled. Of course, being an S4, the dashboard features the more modern rocker switches and they’re beautifully set-off by those bright replacement decals.

It all still looks great and if I hadn’t just told you when it had been done you could be forgiven for thinking the work had been done in the last few years.

Aesthetics aside, the deep bucket seats are still comfortable and very supportive, and hold you surprisingly well, which is just as well given the Elan’s legendary propensity for dispatching corners considerably faster than seems sensible.

You are aided and abetted in this by a gorgeous three-spoke steering wheel with Colin Chapman’s signature on it. The gear knob is a plain wooden ball, but what it lacks in over-styling it more than makes up for in tactility.

The car retains its original dealer fitted radio, which is fully operational but, of course, is mono with no FM. That’s fine because you won’t want to listen to music while you’re whanging your way along your favourite country lane anyway.

Safety equipment has been judiciously upgraded and now includes shoulder seatbelts, a fire extinguisher, and hazard warning lights. That’s good because if you insist on period safety equipment then you’re going to have period accident injuries if it all goes wrong.

The vendor tells us that all the lights, electrics, ventilation, electric windows, and heating work correctly. We haven’t tested them but if you’re of a cynical bent, please contact us to come and see the car for yourself and have a play.

The boot boards are present as is the spare wheel. The tool kit, jack, etc. are not original but then sourcing new ones is what autojumbles were invented for.

Aside from sourcing an OE jack and tool kit, there are a few other minor bits and bobs that would repay your attention. For example, there is a very small crack in the central console on the driver’s side and there are a few areas where the veneer on the dashboard is lifting very slightly along the grain.

Only pedants will notice that the graphic on the fuel gauge dial has been erased in one place due to careless cleaning. We are told that new replacement gauges are available, or the dial could be extracted from a cosmetically good faulty unit. While we’re talking about the fuel gauge, it only reads ¾ when full. The sender unit has been checked so the gauge needs recalibrating.

Ditto the magnetically driven Smiths speedometer, which is reading rather high. You could have it recalibrated – assuming, of course, that you won’t be relying on your smartphone to give you an accurate speed via its GPS. You know, like we all do these days. (Note: The odometer is mechanically linked so is reading correctly and the speedo gear box drive is the correct 23-tooth cog as specified for the 3.55 differential.)

The recent recommissioning and remedial work included all fluids being drained, flushed, and refilled. A new battery gave life to the new sparkplugs, which fire as they should thanks to new HT leads and a distributor cap and when they should thanks to the timing and valve clearances being set up properly.

One carburettor jet was replaced and the twin Stromberg carburettors were balanced and the idle and fast idle reset. New cables for the throttle and choke were fitted, as were new engine mounts.

Other recent work includes a new heater hose and a replacement control valve, new wiper arms and blades, a reconditioned clutch master and slave cylinders, and the righthand upper steering swivel replaced.

The battery tray was repaired and strengthened, the boot sealing rubber was replaced along with the carpet, a new windscreen rubber and filler strip were installed, a new pair of horns now give a satisfactory ‘parp’, a new window washer pump aids visibility, and a new earth strap to the antenna and a headlamp vacuum hose help keeps things operating as they should.

UK-specific jobs included headlights with the correct right-hand-drive pattern and the original mph speedo refitted complete with the appropriate gearbox drive gear.

Incredibly, the Elan still sits on the original factory chassis, which is remarkable and only possible due to a winning combination of a diligent owner, 25 years of careful storage, a period Waxoyl treatment in 1985, and the preservation of the original and intact red-lead factory paint. As you can see in the photos, the usual high-risk areas of the Elan chassis are good. We are told that the box chassis areas all seem solid when probed with a screwdriver and mallet.

While it is unrestored as such, the bills that come with the car show that during the 1980s and 1990s many items have been reconditioned, replaced, or rebuilt to cope with the inevitable age-related deterioration.

These include:

• The engine, gearbox and differential being rebuilt.

• The brake calipers have been reconditioned with new pistons, along with the fitment of a new brake servo.

• All the suspension, steering and roll bar bushing has been replaced along with new trunnions and steering swivels and a reconditioned steering rack with new track-rod ends.

• New dampers and springs were installed.

• The cooling system has been upgraded in line with the Lotus’ factory recommendations. The work comprised the uprated radiator and cooling fan as fitted to later Elan models, improved engine compartment ventilation on the exhaust side, and a blanking plate under the radiator along with foam blanking above it.

• A new fuel tank and wheels were fitted.

• The front wiring harness was replaced and hazard warning lights were installed.

The car is one of the 924 units made for the UK/European market with Stromberg carburettors rather than the Webers, or less frequently Dellortos, that are more conventionally associated with the European Lotus TwinCam engine. Some aficionados malign the Stromberg carburetted engine, which is unfair as this is largely due to the poor power output of the US emission-strangled export cars.

The owner tells us that the ‘high-lift’ camshaft that was later used on the Elan Sprint was developed for the European Stromberg-carburetted engine. As a result, these engines are thought to produce 118bhp, which is only 8bhp down on the 126bhp of the later S4 Sprint.

Indeed, as Miles Wilkins quotes in his book The Lotus Twin Cam, Roy Babcock (then the service manager at Lotus) preferred the Stromberg engines because they “gave better fuel economy and made the engines smoother across the entire rev. range. They also produced the some of the fastest Elans known, which were even quicker that the Sprint. All in all, they were better to drive behind than Webers. Even today [1988] many people in Hethel still prefer Strombergs but fashion dictated the return of the four trumpets [Webers]”

A further boost the Elan’s reliability and performance and reliability comes via a non-original electronic points module designed specifically for the car. This was fitted to reduce points-bounce and results in a more consistent ignition timing. The original mechanical points are with the car and can be refitted for originality.

A compression test shows three of the cylinders with between 190psi and 200psi. The factory specification is >170psi and all cylinders within 10 psi of each other. However, cylinder number three shows just 170psi. It is suspected that this is due to a poorly seated exhaust valve rather than an issue with the bore or rings. The valve clearances, which are critical on the Lotus TwinCam, have been checked and are correct. This is perhaps something that should be checked after a few thousand miles to see if it has improved. Should the issue persist, lifting the head and reseating the offending valve might be required but it’s worth remembering that this is more a question of balance across all four cylinders than a worryingly low reading per se.

The engine bay itself is gorgeous, even if the engine and cam covers aren’t the correct shades. Still, if that sort of thing bothers you then you’ll have hours of fun putting it right and if you’re not then you’ll have even more hours of fun thrashing it up and down the rev range and listening to it wail.

Speaking of noise, the exhaust silencer is a stainless-steel unit and in perfect condition as is the piping all the way through to the manifold. It also has the earlier Series 4 straight twin silencer exhaust, which is more efficient than the later version albeit a little bit louder. Still, you don’t buy a sportscar for an absence of noise, do you?

All brake calipers and pads show little wear and aging since being replaced by remanufactured units in the early 1990s. The brake servo is said to be in as-new condition. The owner reminds us that the original servo or the associated service kits have not been available for many years, so the unit fitted is not cosmetically true to the original factory fitted item.

All suspension bushes are said to be in an excellent condition, as are the Rotoflex drive couplings. The same goes for the front dampers and springs.

There are some niggles you’ll want to address but then fettling is going to be a key part of the pleasure you’ll derive from owning an old Lotus, so you might as well dig out your old AF spanners and work your way through the owner’s (unusually honest) list of things that need doing.

There are a couple of small oil leaks around the engine including an occasional drip from the bottom of the bell-housing. We’re told that an investigation showed that this is most likely from the rear of the sump rather than the crank seal. There is no sign of oil finding its way on to the clutch.

Although the chassis is in exceptional condition as far as rust is concerned, it is often the case that the front suspension turrets will have sagged slightly with age, leading to a small error in the front suspension geometry which causes a noticeable tug on the steering wheel.

The factory originally fitted shims under the steering rack to compensate for the manufacturing tolerances in each chassis. On this vehicle, the shims are rather thick, which suggests an attempt to dial-out the bump-steer caused by a tired chassis.

The new owner might want to check the dimensional accuracy of the front chassis members and adjust mechanically if required. Again, we can’t help but think that the owner’s perfectionism means he’s overstating the issue. In fact, he himself admits that: “any grave problem in this area would be apparent whilst driving the car and/or in tyre wear, which is not the case. However, someone seeking ‘as-new’ handling might want to investigate this further.”

While you’re obsessing about the suspension (heh, we aren’t judging…) you’ll spot that the nearside rear wishbone has a very slight dent in the underside, almost certainly due to the careless placement of a jack. The owner has taken a good look at it and reports that it looks to be largely cosmetic as no kinking is visible from the upper side of the wishbone that would indicate a structural or dimensional issue. New wishbones and bushes are available, and are reasonably priced and easy to replace.

The remaining To Do list is small. The rear nearside brake disk has some scoring and should probably be replaced. The rear suspension Lotocones (the rubber bushes at the point where the top of the rear suspension struts engage with the chassis) have never been replaced and it is likely that they are no longer providing optimum control of the rear suspension geometry.

Please also note that the vehicle has not had the valve seat replacements necessary to allow it to run permanently on unleaded fuel therefore a lead substitute additive will be needed. The Elan, like so many performance cars, benefits from the highest possible octane fuel, e.g. BP Ultimate 102 or Esso Synergy +99.

NB: The Elan was first registered on the 7th of August 1969 and given the registration number WVB 244G. However, after a period off road (between 1976 and 1983 approximately) the DVLA insisted in 1984 that the vehicle be re-registered as TAA 127G as the old registration had possibly been reused. Paperwork shows that the owner contested this re-registration on historical grounds. The appeal was refused.

The SNAFU continues, because it also incorrectly registered the little Lotus as a ‘saloon’ rather than the Drophead Coupé shown on the original documents.

Also, the owner tells us that when trying to register the car in France, the speedometer was briefly replaced with a km/h unit as originally fitted to European Elans. Cross-referencing the distance clocked on the mph unit, the old MOT certificates, and the distance on the km/h unit gives a recorded mileage of about 80,000 miles.

The Lotus comes with a large history file comprises receipts and paperwork from the 1980s onwards.

This is not a concours Lotus Elan but that’s a bonus because it isn’t going to have the price tag of a concours Lotus Elan either.

Not that its final hammer price should be your sole consideration because it’s actually a much more interesting proposition than any show-winning car anyway because this is a well-fettled example you can actually use. A car for high days and holidays and to hell with the worry of only using it on dry days. It’s also solid enough that you’ll be handing it down to your children and reliable enough that you could drive it down to your holiday home in the south of France.

It’s quick too, and easily capable of doubling up as an occasional track or hillclimb car, while docile enough to potter its way to a riverside pub for a cheeky half-pint on a summer’s day.

It’s also got just enough minor work needed to justify winter evenings and weekends in the garage, where you’ll have the chance to potter about in there with the radio on and a glass of something reviving to hand while you remind yourself of the joy of working on a car that is resolutely mechanical and satisfyingly free of ECUs, onboard computers, and sealed black boxes.

Plus, of course, it’s a Lotus Elan. THE legendary British sportscar and the stuff of your, and our, childhood dreams.

How much? Well, it’s hard to be prescriptive but we think you’re likely to get all this for somewhere between £20,000 and £25,000, which is way better than keeping it in the bank earning the sort of paltry interest that means you’re actually losing money while inflation is this high.

Viewing is always encouraged, and this particular car is located with us at The Market HQ near Abingdon; we are open weekdays 9am-5pm, to arrange an appointment please use the Contact Seller button at the top of the listing. Feel free to ask any questions or make observations in the comments section below, or try our ‘Frequently Asked Questions.’