MEET THE OWNER – DJ LORD ANTHONY AND HIS LOTUS ELITE

Lord Anthony of London, the well-known DJ, has been a devotee of the Lotus Elite “ever since I was a kid. When I was travelling in our family car’s back seat, I caught a glimpse of these exotic beasts neatly lined up in the forecourt of the official Lotus dealership in Drakes Broughton, a small village near Worcestershire”. Finally, this year, he acquired this bright yellow 1979 example to bedazzle his friends and neighbours.

And the Elite is a truly striking machine. When it debuted in 1974, the days of home-assembled Lotus kits already belonged to the past, a casualty of VAT replacing Purchase Tax in the previous year. Nor had the new Type 75 Elite much in common with the 1958-1963 two-seater sports car of the same name. Instead, this was a Lotus for the ‘smart set’, with a GRP hatchback body, four seats and a 4-valve, DOHC 1,973cc four-cylinder engine, giving a top speed of 125 mph.

Lotus unveiled the Elite in May 1974, and Clive Richardson noted in Motor Sport:

Instantly Lotus have moved considerably up-market, the cheapest specification Elite, the 501, being priced at £5,445 including taxes, and the option pack 502 at £5,857. Colin Chapman and his team have thus tilted directly at the expensive luxury car market, providing a possible alternative to Jensens, Jaguars, BMWs, Porsches, Mercedes and the like, or even an economical alternative to Ferrari/Lamborghini owners wishing to climb down to a more economical level.

The Elite suffered from teething problems, and Autocar, on the 31^st August 1974, complained of difficulties obtaining a Lotus PR car for a road test. When Motor Sport evaluated the top-of-the-range 503 in 1975, they described it as “one of the finest handling production cars in the world, better than a Porsche and almost on a par with the Dino”. But they also lamented the lack of power, grumbling that “A Cortina 2-litre was able to pull away from the Elite up a motorway gradient when we both accelerated from 65 m.p.h., even though I changed down to fourth”.

Production of the Type 75 ended in 1980, and Lord Anthony contends:

From my understanding, the Elite is not as celebrated as the flagship of the Lotus range. It marked the dramatic styling direction; this was, after all, marketed as ‘The car of the future now!’ You must remember Lotus introduced the Type 75 a year before the Esprit submarine/beach cruiser that turned heads in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. By contrast, the Elite car looked very much like a British Maserati”.

But how did the noble Lord acquire this fine machine? The answer is: “I would like to say she found me! But I have been keeping tabs on various Lotus on Facebook Marketplace and was utterly seduced by that fantastic bodywork. I just had to make her mine – and the fair price also helped!”. As for road manners: “The car glides like a retro-futuristic dream or should I say a luxury 1970s galactic space cruiser fitted with a (rare) automatic transmission and a velvet crush modular dashboard straight out of Blake’s 7”.

For the benefit of younger readers, Blake’s Seven was a 1978-1981 BBC science fiction series in which spaceship interiors resembled Styrofoam, so His Lordship does the Elite a disservice. This is a grand tourer for the jet set, and his Lotus is finished in a most striking colour. Lord Anthony remarks, “I believe it to be ‘Liquid Yellow’ although some say it is ‘Lemon Yellow’. I may well need to consult the official Lotus colour charts for confirmation and get a reference code for it. Either way, it sure does ‘POP’”.

And it surely does!

With Thanks To: DJ Lord Anthony - https://twitter.com/DJLordAnthony