Purchased an S1 Exige last month, nautilus blue owned by my friend for the last 12 years who swore he would never sell it!
Well the lure of a V6 Exige finally changed his mind and I nipped in before it went on to the market. Mechanically very sound, cosmetically it needs a little work here and there but it’s still a great car. It has a bouncing speedo which needs investigating and I have looked at the threads on here for help, so thanks for that, I think it points me in the right direction for now.
I saw the post about Anglesey track day and wondered if the S1 would get in the way of the V6 mob. I appreciate the car is no longer the track day car of choice and I am no Ayrton Senna but just wondered what the consensus of opinion was before I book?
Hi Ade, re your PM. I could not seem to reply, as a newbie I think it said I am not authorised yet. Might be wrong there, I’m old and not a tech head.
Re your question about mileage and price, no big secrets really, I bought the car off a friend and so knew all about the car which was a big plus, mileage was 34K and that’s also what we paid . I don’t know if that’s good or bad but for me, better the devil you know. He said he would never sell it and he had new shocks all round, the big service, new belts, water pump etc 200 miles ago and new tyres not so long ago, so really that was it. We were not looking for another car, we have an S1 Elise, an old Europa and two other Lotus cars as projects! But I have always loved S1 Exiges and my wife has always loved the colour of this car so everything just fell into place. I actually drove this car for a magazine article, a group test of Lotus cars through the years, a 60s Elite up to an Evora about a month before we bought it so I already knew the car was sound and I don’t mind the cosmetic stuff which I can do a bit at a time.
The big problem was storage, the Exige has replaced the Elise in these photos asI have I have cleared some space in the “projects garage” but as you can see, it’s very tight!
You don’t, my wife serves meals through the window! But seriously, you drive it in so the nose is between the posts, get out and push it in the rest of the way, same in reverse when getting it out. It’s not ideal but at least they are under cover. And of course getting the undertrays off, doing oil changes becomes a whole lot easier, it just means you have to get the right car in the right place!
Welcome
Lovely Exige which I think you have bought for a good price. And it even shares the garage space with a Europa.
I’ve got also an Europa (early one) with my Exige. Do you mind sharing a picture of your Europa?
Hi, Not a conscious decision, the chassis came in red, I would have preferred grey but to have it painted they wanted another £350 and at the time I needed that money to spend on mechanical parts. In truth I wished i’d have saved up a bit more at the time, but you learn by your mistakes. I am going to restore an Elan, that will be grey, they still want £350 to powder coat it grey.
It’s the original colour, we liked it so much that when we had it painted, we went for the same again. I’ve owned the car 35 years so we knew quite a lot about it. (there’s a theme going on here) There’s an S2 lurking in the first picture but that was sold to a friend a long time ago. It’s quite original but it sits on some nice minilight wheels but I still have the originals , it has long range alloy fuel tanks, the old ones eventually rusted through.
Nice car, I do love Nautilus blue!
