EuropaSman

It's already on the list. Looks nice 👍 Oyster seat dye available from Staingard by the way ( https://staingard.co.uk/gliptone/ ). TLF thread here:

Yes, an Evora Series 3, but Lotus wouldn't call it that because this is Lotus Version 2.0, the reboot, we are talking about.

Yep, OEM "Elise SC" rims (6 inch wide front & 8 inch wide rears). 195/50 R16 fronts and 225/45 R17 will fit nicely on those.

If you have these fitted @Shortfork then 195 width V105s will fit too, as the fronts are only 1/2 an inch wider than the front rims I have.

Full Yokohama V105 fit with standard geo recommended by Lotus on original rims.

195 width tyres fit perfectly well on 5.5" width OE rims, so no new rims needed. Standard geo should be fine too unless you haven't had it checked for a while. Here is a photo of one of the front wheels on my Elise with the V105 fitted.

For the road and light track use, the Yokohama V105 195/50 R16 84W fronts and 225/45 R17 90W rears marked MO as recommened by Lotus should do the job. I have just had a set of these fitted to my series 3 Elise R Touring to replace the fronts that were original 175 width R16 AD07 LTS2's from 2010 and 225 width AD07 LTS2 rears from 2014, and my word what a difference! Those old tyres were quite hard and the new ones are so much more compliant. In fact the V105s were used on the Lotus Driving Academy Elise Sport 220 cars last year when I did my bronze Lotus Licence track day at Hethel. I am looking at getting a set of Revolution Wheels TC5 cast alloys for running semi slick tyres for track days. I have had the chassis rear brace kit LOTAC05377 fitted because Lotus recommend that "for cars used on closed circuits, this arrangement provides an increased tolerance to abuse" - so a bit of a must for running semi slicks on a Toyota powered Elise. I understand that on later factory built cars using a brace kit, there was a similar crossbrace link, but without adjusters or subframe bracket. I might fit Nankang NS-2R tyres (due to budget) as they are 50% road/50% track biased and the fact I'm only starting out on track days. Other track day tyre alternatives include the Yokohama Advan A052, Nankang AR-1, Toyo R888R, Avon ZZR & Avon ZZS.

The photos for the Sports Racer that Will have just advertised look to be the ones Bell and Colvill took to sell the car previously. They used the Thatchers Hotel just up the road from their West Horsely premises as a backdrop before the corporate background came in. As Will has written in the ad, an up to date set of photos are on their way.

I find hiding the number plate frustrating too. I found the registration of the World Championship homage Evora on the trader's website. It's 111JPS and registered with the DVLA as an Evora S 🤨. That registration would better suit an Elise Type 79 in my humble opinion 😉.

I had a booking for the bronze (£400) in the summer of 2020 that got cancelled due to covid. I had to rebook for July 2021 and the price had gone up by £100 to £500! Looks like the introduction to sports cars day is another £220 on top of what I paid. Based on my experience of the bronze Lotus Licence I'd say save up for the intro course Clive - it will definitely be worth it, especially driving in an Emira. For me the next level experience day is out of my budget at nearly £1000, but I do have my Elise to track this year (bought as a result of doing bronze day! It's all Martin Donnelly's fault 😄).

Looks like the first two packages offered are roughly equivalent to the scare your self sensible experience and bronze level Lotus Licence offered by the previous incarnation of the LDA. The tailor made advanced seems to include mainly elements from the old silver level Lotus Licence, but assume elements of the gold level can be included. I did my bronze last year, so am tempted to book the half day "taste of Lotus" just to have a blat in an Emira for now then maybe do the tailored made advanced session next year 😁

Nearly 3 hours labour to change the passenger airbag cover. The cover (C132U4248J) is £379.24 incl VAT and hopefully not on back order!

Not bad for the money. It's got its original gear knob as well (good for originality - never had a problem with the leather one and have never needed to change to the "Elise knob", I just bought an Elise instead of the aforementioned knob 😄), but needs a new passenger airbag cover though. I've not seen one quite as bad as that, bent up towards the windscreen. I wonder what condition the centre join at the front of the dash top is like?

Found another Launch Edition on Facebook. This Evora was at the Club Lotus track day at Castle Coombe last month.

@windymiller good spot! I missed the fact that the red one was a 2+0. Like you I thought all the Launch Edition cars were 2+2s. Either it's not a LE car or someone has converted it to 2+0 spec (can be done 2+2 to 2+0 I seem to recall, but not the other way around because the 2+0 doesn't have the prerequisite bits for things like rear seat belt anchor points etc.). Or it's a "Hethelism"!