Share the Joys of Lotus With Others Using This Perfectly Preserved Lotus Carlton
The engineers at Lotus sure know how to make a fantastic car. But it's often difficult to share the Lotus experience with others because usually, Lotuses only have one usable passenger seat. Not this one. This four-door Vauxhall-turned-Lotus is a four-door sedan with plenty of room for you and your friends. You should buy it.
Welcome to You Must Buy, our daily look at the cars you really should be buying instead of that boring commuter sedan.
If you're not familiar with the Lotus Carlton, here's a refresher. It's a Lotus-tuned version of Vauxhall's Carlton sedan (also known as the Opel Omega), heavily upgraded to perform on par with many supercars of its time. The Opel-sourced 3.6-liter twin-turbo straight-six engine features a host of improvements to handle the 377-horsepower output, such as bespoke connecting rods, a strengthened bottom end, a ported cylinder head, a forged steel crankshaft, and forged pistons. The six-speed manual transmission is sourced from a Corvette ZR-1, and the track-ready brakes are from AP Racing.
This particular Carlton has covered just 32,000 miles since new, and is currently owned by a Vauxhall dealership group chairman in Europe, according to the listing from Silverstone Auctions. This car is number 214 out of 284 right-hand drive Lotus Carltons built, meticulously serviced and presented in like-new condition. As far as Carltons go, this is one of the cleanest I've ever seen for sale. And because it's more than 25 years old, it's perfectly legal to import into the United States.
Silverstone expects this Carlton to sell between £55,000 and £65,000 (around $73,000 and $86,000) at the auction house's 2018 Silverstone Classic Sale on July 21st. If you're willing to drive on the wrong side of the car, this could be the perfect Lotus person-carrier for you.
You Might Also Like
