Are S2 seats worth keeping

[paul27848]

Just about to replace the S2 seats with Honda S2000 ones. The seats coming out are in very good condition, in ful magnolia leather with no tears, rips etc. They were cleaned up and recolored professionally approx 18 months ago. They are fitted with the carbon fibre seat belt protectors that were a group buy some time ago. The only negative is that the LOTUS embossed logo is hard to make out, there is no wear apparent to cause this but the embossing seems to have flattened back into the leather. My dilemma is whether to keep them as desirable bits and bobs or ebay them. Anybody know if they are sought after and typical values?

Paul

[Rambo]

I'm sure S2 seats in good condition have achieved very good results on E-Bay recently. If you ever want to return the car to stock, keep them. Otherwise put them up for auction and they will realise the price that someone thinks they're worth

[dapinky]

Paul,

The S2 seats *should* be a desirable option (especially in Magnolia) - but are worth whatever someone will pay on the day.

It all depends on your willingness to store the items in the hope that they may come in usefull one day - realistically, the options are likely to be:-

1) fit the S2000 seats, drive the car for a while, decide you don't like them, refit OE seats.
2) fit S2000 seats, love them, keep them, OE seats stay in garage until the day you sell the car wherupon they either get given to new owner, sold on ebay, sold here, thrown in the skip.
3) fit something completely different, and sell the OE seats.

Personally, I like the OE seats, but with doing my car up, I made the decision that to re-cover my current seats would cost far in excess than fitting S2000 seats (did it on the red car, so I know what's involved in re-covering OE seats), and may not be as comfortable.

.... but if I could have bought a good pair of Magnolia seats (or even black ones!) at the time I was looking, and for a fair price, I'd probably have done it that way.

In short, if you've made the decision to swap seats, then i would make sure that you like the new seats, then when you're happy, think about moving the old ones on - it will depend if you can have cash tied up in parts, or need the money to fund the new seats - but if you're in no huge hurry, you can test the market for as long as you want until you get the money you think they're worth.

The other side of the coin is that while many owners are going for the Honda seats, and they are seen as an 'improvement', there may be a surplus of OE seats for sale, and the prices will settle accordingly - you should be a bit protected from that situation with a desirable colour / condition option - but price them too high, and some potential customers will just get Honda seats themselves..... it's a bit of a lottery!

I intend to keep mine in the garage until such time as either someone else needs them, or Angie decides that they are taking up too much space - they are too good to just chuck away, but a set of 'red stripe' SE seats are unlikely to be worth a lot on fleabay.

[Simon_P]

The seats are specific to the car so they will be desirable as more people restore cars.

If you can sell them for sensible money now, they aren't going to be any cheaper in a few years.

The Lotus embossing was always shallow.

[theelanman]

The S2 seats are better than the SE seats.......
they have a base in them rather than a sad bit of rubber

I'd keep the S2 seats...

[DeanG]

All Lotus parts are worth keeping. You never know what will be desired or needed in the future.

[paul27848]

Thanks everyone for your replies and advice. As several have suggested I'm going to keep the S2 seats, but storage area is now becoming restricted. I'm going to create space by getting rid of other seats I've got - Alfa Spider black leather and SE yellow stripe leather. Some believe it better to retain anything Lotus, but I've never been keen on the stripey look myself. I now have a pair of black S2000 seats for my NMY SE and a pair of red/black S2000 seats for my
Palacio Purple S2. Now need to get on with fitting them, still debating with myself which of the fitting options to follow.

Paul