What kind of damage is this?

[Loafers92]

Hi all

I’ve recently purchased an ‘02 elise and the car has been perfect so far: drives really well, straight with no vibrations. I did an hpi check before buying it and no damage recorded.

Today when washing the car I noticed that the right headlight seemed newer that the left one- the left one had some sun related marks that the right one didn’t, and the right turn signal wasn’t as flush in the clam as the left one. So I looked into the right side intake below the headlight and found this :



I looked around the car and found no evidence of damage to the chassis / suspension mounts, so I imagine that it’s somehow had a previous non serious (I hope ) collision that required a repaired clam and a new light. The lotus badge looks like it’s the original one too.

Just asking because I know damage to these cars can be serious and unsafe, and since it’s my first elise I have no idea If this can be considered ok and not something that removes value from the car, considering it’s hpi clear and it drives really well (a friend of mine who owns an s2 said it drives perfectly ).

In short, is this type of damage superficial/ ok to have?

[pss1]

Hard to tell from the pictures, OP. If you’re worried you should get it over to an Elise specialist for inspection. You’ll not get peace of mind from a collection of internet forum replies, unfortunately.

[guards red]

That looks superficial. It looks as though the bumper has been pushed back and it's cracked the glass fibre enclosure behind it.

As the bumper is flexible in very low impact, it as flexed and shown no damage.

[Loafers92]

Thanks for the input, I understand as far as pictures go they're not the most detailed. I'm having the car looked at tomorrow at a friends garage (he does racecars) so at least I can confirm its nothing serious.

I'm guessing that the way the panel is split at the top and then the crack stops at towards the bottom, it suffered an impact close to the headlight years ago, or as guardsred says, just a small impact that pushed the bumper back. I might look into finding a replacement panel and replace it during the winter!

[kambites]

Realistically any head on impact hard enough to have caused structural damage would have resulted in a new clam so you wouldn't see any signs from the outside. You can crack an Elise clam at less then walking pace.