Tuesday 16th December 2003

Lotus Lada on eBay

Yep, the ultima Lada could be yours!

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The Lada that Top Gear had modified by Lotus is now up for grabs on eBay.

The TV programme took a standard Lada over to Hethel last year and the lads at Lotus descended on it to turn it into a fast, top handling saloon.

They fitted Bilstein dampers, uprated brakes, a unique paint decal scheme as well as specially trimmed OMP racing seats with interior specially tailored to match (black leather with red alcantara).

It's got some nice BBS alloys with Yokohama track tyres and best of all they fitted it with a Fiat 2 litre twin cam engine, stage 2 race tuned by renowned race engineer Guy Croft. That's mated to a Fiat 131 five speed box via a race clutch.

Power? A tasty 180bhp at 5,000 RPM, capable of 0-60 in about 7 seconds and a top speed of 135MPH.

It's got no MOT or tax and the buyer wants cash in a brown envelope!

Link : eBay

[Nano2nd]

well i dunno if its just me that feels this way, but doesn't it make you proud the BBC can justify spending £100,000 of our license money on that thing

[cotty]

How come it has no tax or MOT, is the owner just lazy?

[zumbruk]

Nano2nd said:

well i dunno if its just me that feels this way, but doesn't it make you proud the BBC can justify spending £100,000 of our license money on that thing

It's just you. Firstly, Lotus did the work for nothing - they just said it would cost £100K if it had been paid for & secondly £100K is next to nothing in TV production terms. And thridly, I think it's a hoot and worth every penny. In fact, I'm tempted to bid on it. It's only £5.5K at the moment.

[Ye Olde Esprit]

Now why couldn't they do that good a job on their regular cars?

Nicholas

[laner]

Is the car actually this guys to sell.....short of dough but not actually willing to spend a couple of hundred to tax and test it......thereby realising probably another couple of grand at least??

[mustard]

laner said:

Is the car actually this guys to sell

Well if its not hes gonna have some problems, its on just about every motoring forum in the country!

[Ye Olde Esprit]

If the thing has 100K worth of engineering, why is he selling it so low? Why not ask for more? Surely some collector will pay to have the "TV Lotus Lada" - or a museum?

And if he is willing to accept such a low amount, why not just donate it to charity to auction and raise money?

Or give it back to Lotus so they can convert it into their next 2+2 Excel...

Nicholas

[MagicSteve]

[quote]Yep, the ultima Lada could be yours![/quote]

Delete "could", add "IS"

FYI: The seller *is* the owner, the guy pictured in TopGear. He had to sell due to family commitments and did not encourage to drive the car as a daily transport.

I have never thought of getting the car within my financial budget, would really have estimated it in the 15-18K region as it really is *the* collectors item. And as such it will be displayed at various events, let alone Stelvio 2004

[mattjbatch]

MagicSteve said:

[quote]Yep, the ultima Lada could be yours!

Delete "could", add "IS"

[/quote]Congrats. Have fun in it. Get the windows tinted and you can pretend to be Russian mafia.

[Bodo]

MagicSteve said:

said: Yep, the ultima Lada could be yours! Delete "could", add "IS" FYI: The seller *is* the owner, the guy pictured in TopGear. He had to sell due to family commitments and did not encourage to drive the car as a daily transport. I have never thought of getting the car within my financial budget, would really have estimated it in the 15-18K region as it really is *the* collectors item. And as such it will be displayed at various events, let alone Stelvio 2004

So Stefan, you bought it then? Nutter! Nice one!