Considering an M100 Elan.. Advice?

[dangrant77]

Hi everyone.

I'm considering purchasing an M100 Lotus Elan sometime next year, to be used purely as a weekend car and stored away in the winter. I'd be spending around £10,000 on the car, and would be looking to buy one with low mileage that had been well looked after.

I have a few questions that I hope will put my mind at ease about ownership. I've done some research into the Isuzu engine and found it to be a very reliable unit based off of owners of the vehicle, however i'm concerned about the potential for the car to become very expensive overtime in general maintenance/repair costs.

I'm not particularly "hands on" with cars myself, so works that would need to be carried out would always be done by a garage/lotus specialist.

I was wondering, with a low mileage example worth around £10,000, how much money per year would you expect somebody like me to need to put into the car to keep it in great condition? I'd only be doing about 2,000 a year in it, so i'm hopeful that buying a nice one should mean the cost of ownership wouldn't be too high.

Would you advise steering clear of an M100 Elan in terms of potential repair/maintenance costs? Or are these cars generally not as expensive to maintain as I'm worrying about? As I said, the work to maintain and repair the car would always be done at a garage, so I understand naturally that makes things a bit more pricey.

Something like £1000 a year on average to maintain it on average I wouldn't be not too bothered about.. as mentioned i'd be doing very low miles in it per year too.

Thanks! Hoping some of you can help put my mind at ease..

Dan

[dapinky]

Hi Dan, welcome to the madhouse of LEC.

I am one of those people who only ever uses a garage for the annual MOT test, so can't tell you how much I spend in an average year.....

.... If you advise of your location, maybe someone will know of a garage that they use (and can recommend), and give you an idea of their annual costs.

For the sort of age, mileage and price that you mention, there should be a few good examples around at the right time, the trick is deciding which one is best suited to your needs/wants. Personally, I favour function over form and would chose a well-maintained early car in a less desirable colour over a pretty later car in a great colour with more potential to spend out later - but others would rather have a pretty looking car sitting in the garage than a grotty one driving down the country lanes!!! (each to their own, I don't wish to sound condescending, and there is room for all sorts of owners).

[dangrant77]

Hi Dave, thank you very much for your reply!

Completely agree with you regarding prioritising a condition over anything, particularly mechanically. That will be something i'm keen on making sure of to make ownership that bit easier if I do go for on!

Out of interest, how much work do you find yourself carrying out on the Elan year by year? Do you find that once a lot of the major work is done it's fairly easy to simply leave and enjoy driving? Or much more of an ongoing thing?

Again, thanks a lot for your response.

Dan

[MPx]

Welcome Dan. Unlike Dave I do very little on the car myself and for many years have used the South West Lotus Centre at Lifton, Paul Matty's before that. The service schedule is detailed on this site here.

My annual milage is always low, sometimes silly low. SWLC take a pragmatic approach but still cover the bases, in particular renewing belts every 5 years at longest even if I've only covered 2 or 3 k miles. Obviously costs will differ depending on which service is completed and what needs doing. Looking at the invoices, they're mostly significantly sub £500 despite typically some stuff being done in addition to the service and MoT. The belt change years are closer to £1k.

Of course there are other ways of parting you from your money and I have spent heavily on various upgrades (brakes, exhaust, etc) and also chasing the impossibility of water tightness with new hood and seals. All choices not necessity.

Good luck with your search. I'm happy to see that prices have been hardening in recent years and hopefully will keep going towards my selling price of £15k. Therefore best act quickly to get a good one for £10k, though prices usually dip over the winter months if you want to leave it 'til then.

[dapinky]

It is one of those questions that is hard to quantify, really.

When I first got the car, I found myself doing a lot of "little" jobs for the first few months of ownership - obvious things like changing the oil, PAS fluid, brake fluid etc, as well as generally tidying up the looks of the car.

Over the next couple of years I spent time really sorting out the brakes, changing cambelt, exhaust, re-build turbo and other stuff like that - some by necessity, but mainly by choice.

Then when the mechanicals were 100% I did all the suspension with new shocks, springs, bushes and painting each component along the way.

Only after that did I decide to get the respray done, as it was always a 'driving' car, not a 'polishing' car.

Now I am at a happy position where I can walk out to the garage, fire it up and go wherever I want, whenever I want..... it isn't even a case of I now know it to be reliable after all these years - - I've always been like that, and it's never let me down. In 17 years of ownership of Elans, my wife had to call out the RAC once as the fuel cut-out had tripped and she couldn't start hers, and that's it! They have taken me all round the UK and bits of Europe and I've never worried about not getting where I'm going.

Basically, once you "know" that your car is sorted, ongoing maintenance isn't a killer at all...... but as Mike says, it's the things we do as a choice which creep up on you!

(I change the engine oil/filter every year, cambelt/waterpump every 5 years, brake fluid every 2 years, and an annual 'Springtime pre-driving inspection' involves cleaning all 4 callipers, checking everything works, cleaning out the odd spider web from inside and washing the car.... this lot will take me half a day tops.

Even if (when?) they start to go wrong, nearly everything is sortable for a reasonable cost. Many parts are shared with other GM cars of the era, or have been remade by people, so you are not limited to paying Lotus prices for many items.

[Tuga2112]

you are effectively asking us "how long is a piece of string"

this type of question can go off on all kinds of tangents, and here's my take on it

also, this is a biased crowd to ask, you will probably find in piston heads ex owners stating the Elan is the most expensive car ever, and you should get a BMW something. or a MX5, BUT us being the experts on the elan KNOW that the elan is the right car for you, and your family, and your parents.......

I Think MPx reply is the only type of estimate you can rely on. (which is far from the overall picture)

everything else is a gamble as any used vehicle will be.
if you need a head gasket replaced, you may be looking at more than 700 for that bill.
an oil cooler radiator set me back more than 300 a few years ago, and that was myself installing it.
you may find yourself needing to "fix" the brakes every year because they practically need reconditioning to pass the MOT (unless you upgrade them)
gear cables linkage. (an unavoidable issue when you have an SE without the upgrade) will be an extremely expensive bill

The large bulk of cost when it comes to repair any old car comes from labor. if you take that out of the equasion by DIY the Elan is not any more expensive to maintain than any other sports car of the same era. (I have experience with multiple toyotas, alfa spider and a 2000's peugeot 206cc) generally speaking, the rare the car is, the more expensive the parts are, which plays to the elan in both ways, Any GM shared part is generally speaking cheaper than a toyota part. But any elan part is generally more expensive than the toyota counterpart.... except when the toyota model is rarer than the elan. (a new set of gt4 front suspension arms has set me back 2/3 of what i paid for the whole elan)

TLDR.
1 - if you buy 30 old car, prepare to spend more money than if you buy a 10 year old car
2 - the elan fixed maintenance costs are not anything out of the yazoo
3 - the elan is the best car ever
4 - GM parts are far cheaper than elan exclusive parts.
5 - labor is expensive, and old cars need more labor hours.
6 - the elan is the best car you can buy
7 - DIY saves you an absolute fortune in jobs that require a lot of time "getting to the part" in relationship to "the cost of the part" (head gaskets, and timing belts being prime examples of such)
8 - the elan is the best car for you!
9 - most elan exclusive parts that require regular-ish replacement have been re-manufactured by someone by now, but they aint' cheap (rear brake calipers, radiators, rear light clusters)
10 - Elans are an evaluating asset. (this is mixture of joke and truth)

[Saltire]

Well . . . I agree with the earlier “piece of string” responses. However,

- Lotus sets out an A, a B and a C service for the Elan
- I always do (or have done) an service every year, without fail
- I always do a C plus cambelt and water pump every 5 years without fail
- I overhaul the brakes every year, just to make sure they’re free and sliding properly
- I change the brake fluid every e years and the antifreeze (always blue) every 2 years
- over the 7years since I bought mine, I’ve gradually worked through a range of other things like headlamp motors which don’t go up and down properly, roof seals, hazard switch and so on; some of these (as Mike says) are choice rather than mandatory

When buying, I would look at condition and service history, rather than colour or mileage. If you can, before you buy, come to a meeting or look at a few other owners cars, and they’ll be more than happy to show you round and highlight some of the ‘challenges’

I do some of my own work, but I also have an experienced mechanic who knows the Elan and who I trust. As a general rule, I wouldn’t consider using a Lotus dealer; most of them these days don’t have anyone who understands the Elan or is interested in working on it. As said previously, if you tell us where you are, someone will pop up with a recommended garage and/or an invitation to see their car.

Good luck!

[HJ2]

I goes like this:
1. You have 2 left hands and don't know anything from tinkering around on cars.
2. Then you buy an m100 and start doing things yourself with the aid of this magnificent forum
3. After a while of ownership we'll have a second 'Wodan' on the forum and you'll be happily cruising along, wondering why you worried in the first place...

[Denny]

Where are you located?
I will be selling mine when the Emira finally arrives.
You won't get much more of a lower mileage example.

[Karozza]

Denny, have you received my PM asking if you have sold the car?

[Jamie N]

Wonder what happened to Dan then, seems to have fracked off pretty sharpish after reading the replies, less than 24 hours he lasted, must have been terrified by the LEC rhetoric.

[Tuga2112]

Wonder what happened to Dan then, seems to have fracked off pretty sharpish after reading the replies, less than 24 hours he lasted, must have been terrified by the LEC rhetoric.

safe to assume car has been sold more than a year later