Brand new Lotus Elan cost today?

[Costas]

If anybody missed the pictures, they can be always found on this facebook post

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1376617 ... 735596063/

[wayne]

The price of the car is already over my set limit of 16.000Euro, so I am releasing details, of it.

The car is located in Muscat, OMAN. It belongs to the fleet of cars of the personal collection of His Majesty the Sultan Qaboos bin Said who died two years ago. The Palace decided to put on auction this collection of estimated 500+ cars but in small portions of 60 cars at a time. This week it was auctioned a set of Audis, Mercedes and BMWs mostly plus some few rare cars among them, such as an Audi Quatro 1997, 2.2lt, with 4600km that was sold today at 190.000 Euros, a Nissan 150ZX, 1987, 3.0lt, 8000km which currently is at 55.000 and of course the Lotus Elan.

So the Lotus Elan was probably given as a present to his Majesty (guessing here) it is 1992, BRG, with 607km, chassis number SCC100ZT1NHH16280.
The car was never driven, still has sticker on windscreen advising not to rev above 4.000 before 1000km are driven. It only has factory km done.
As it is property of his Magesty the Sultan, you do realize that there is an army of mechanics that are maintaining all the cars in mint condition in a way that if at any point a Royal member wants to drive one, it is ready to go safely. Thus the car is in mint condition in and out. I inspected it myself, all the engine is full of tags of dates of when everything has been checked, replaced etc. The hood is like new, no scratch or crack and soft as installed today. Same goes for seals. Interior is as nobody ever sat inside, MINT. There are no words to describe it.

It still has 16 hours for final bid, already at 16.500 euros but the big increase will happen at the last 30 min as did so with all the rest of the cars. (For example the Audi Quattro was at 100.000 just 30min before end of auction and it ended up double that). I believe that the Elan will go to the area of 25k - 30k.

Unfortunately, when i inspected the car, it was inside the parking area of the Palace so no phones or cameras are allowed and I couldnt take any Videos or pictures. However you can see it at this link, if it doesnt work for you, message me on facebook or instagram for pictures.

https://mazad.om/auction/view/9016?language=en

Click on pictures to get an HD version of them

Price is on Omani Rials, you can roughly multiply by 2.5 to get it in Euros. On top of the auction 8% has to be paid for expenses and taxes, and any shipment to Europe is in the area of 3-5k euros. So at the moment even if i get the car at present price, it will cost me 25k. We will see final price in 16 hours.

I hope that this solved questions and doubts.

Please Note that His Majesty was the Ruler of Oman for 52 years and thus it adds value to the car, especially for locals.

PS. The audio system is changed, instead of Blaupunkt there is an Alpine installed, and the key holes at doors looked strange to me, probably lost keys and had to change them?

Sorry to hear that you didn't get the car Costas. Interesting to know that it was for sale in Oman, so close to me in Bahrain. I'll check with the Lotus agents here in Bahrain and UAE to see if they know anything about it. Adamas motors were recently trying to buy a very low mileage Lotus Carlton for an eye watering amount.

If that car was in Oman, it has obviously been stored in an air conditioned garage, no shrinkage of the dash material around the vents and a few other give away signs.

I would have probably bid a bit higher If i'd have seen it, but not the final asking price.

Badges and wheels look the same on my Bahrain LHD car, but my car did have the route OZ stickers on the wheels when I first bought it in 2002. The weird thing to me is the audio system being replaced? this would have alarm bells ringing for me. I know some people here that collect some very high end cars and dont drive them and just park them in air con garages, none would change the Audio system to a modern one.

In 1992 there were 5 cars imported into Bahrain. The earliest ones I know of in Dubai were 1991.

If I can find any information on the car from the local Lotus dealers, I will let you know.