The Elan might not have been Lotus’s first sports car, but it’s the firm’s best remembered. It was born of a desire to develop a sports car that could be built – and thus sold – for less than the price of the Elite – which was priced to appeal to, well, the elite. While MG and Triumph had sewn up the mainstream market, the Elan was a more tailored sports car – acut above, with performance to match.
That exclusivity and value has always meant that the Elan has been among the most prized and thus the most valuable of 1960s sports cars, and has represented the pinnacle of collecting achievement to hundreds of owners. Its image was boosted by television appearances too – what red-blooded male growing up in the 1960s could fail to remember catsuited Emma Peel leaping from her Elan to thwart vaguely psychedelic baddies in the 1960s hit television series
