Ironically, The Lotus Elan +2S was the first Lotus not to be offered in kit form. However, 37 years after the car's 1967 debut, Spyder Engineering is doing a roaring trade in giving them a new lease of effervescent life. Ian Hyne discovers the secret of its renewed success.
Like the boom trike featured elsewhere in this issue and at first sight identified as a half bike, half car, so the Spyder Engineering Ford Zetec Elan +2 conversion, to give it it's full official title, is another half and half proposition. It's half kit car being a tubular, backbone chassis with double wishbone suspension and disc brakes all-round, a Ford Zetec 2 litre engine, MT75, five-speed gearbox and a Ford 3.64:1 limited slip differential. The other job is a restoration project on an original Lotus S2 body and interior that then mates with the new Spyder rolling chassis to create a modern sports car that is generally acknowledged as a classic Colin Chapman Lotus.
Question 1. Why would you want to restore a 37 year old sports car instead of building a more modern design? Well, just look at it. It's gorgeous and just as modern looking today as it was back in 1967. But there's more to the Lotus Elan +2 than just an externally pretty, sixties sports car.
Colin Chapman always said he designed cars he wanted to drive but of course his ideas in respect of what he wanted to drive evolved as he did. Aside from the Lotus Cortina, Lotus road cars had exclusively been two-seater sports cars culminating in the Elan, which appeared in fixed head form in 1965. It was an instant hit and has become an all-time classic but it was small.
KIT-CAR