• The sunshine and nimble Lotus Elan was the embodiment of founder Colin Chapman’s design philosophy.
• This refurbished 1972 instance is powered by a 1.6-liter engine paired with a five-speed handbook transmission.
• This Carry a Trailer on-line public sale ends on Wednesday, July 19.

No firm exemplifies a philosophy of Much less Is Extra the best way Lotus does. When its tiny Elan launched in 1962, it was Jaguar E-type cash, for which you bought a small-displacement four-cylinder engine and a featherweight chassis. However the place the Jag was muscular and delightful, the Lotus was mongoose-agile and arduous to catch.

Up for public sale on Carry a Trailer—which, like Automotive and Driver, is a part of Hearst Autos—is a late-model instance of that Lotus magic contact. It is a 1972 Elan Dash, fitted with a five-speed handbook for slightly extra livability, and painted in colours that recall the Gold Leaf-sponsored Lotus F1 racing workforce of the late Nineteen Sixties.

The 13-inch wheels are fitted with 185/70 Avon tires, and behind them lurk disc brakes in any respect 4 corners. A limited-slip differential helps get the ability down out again, and the cabin has been cosmetically refreshed (regardless of the small dimension, the Elan is surprisingly roomy inside).

The Elan wasn’t the primary roadgoing Lotus, but it surely stays top-of-the-line of the breed. Actually, Mazda’s engineers thought so, as the unique Miata could be very almost a modernized clone of an Elan.

However even a Miata looms over this Lotus. Measuring slightly below twelve toes lengthy and with a curb weight of round 1500 kilos, the Elan is all about slicing each gram. As an example, the fiberglass hood does not even have hinges, however fairly simply slots into place.

Below that hood on this case is a 1.6-liter four-cylinder twin-cam engine good for a claimed 140 horsepower. When new, this engine was rated for 105 horsepower, and an Elan would dash to 60 mph in slightly over seven seconds, so this automotive ought to be very fast. The five-speed handbook is from a later Elan 2+2 and may make freeway cruising slightly calmer.

But it surely will not be boring. The sunshine weight of an Elan implies that it has hardly any inertia to beat when accelerating, braking, or turning. It flits and glints over a winding backroad with its buzzy four-cylinder engine on the boil, an internal-combustion hummingbird. The closest driving expertise to it’s its descendant, the Lotus Elise, which ceased manufacturing in 2021.

The model’s most up-to-date product, the all-electric Eletre, has strayed removed from this ethos. It is as quick as you want with as much as 905 hp, but it surely’s additionally the dimensions of a Honda Pilot and suggestions the scales at 5500 kilos.

This is your likelihood to rage towards the dying of the light-weight. Per pound, the Elan might look pretty costly when the mud settles. However as a primary instance of Colin Chapman’s “Simplify, and add lightness” maxim, it will be value each penny.

Contributing Editor

Brendan McAleer is a contract author and photographer primarily based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British vehicles, got here of age within the golden period of Japanese sport-compact efficiency, and commenced writing about vehicles and folks in 2008. His explicit curiosity is the intersection between humanity and equipment, whether or not it’s the racing profession of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught each of his younger daughters shift a handbook transmission and is grateful for the excuse they supply to be perpetually shopping for Sizzling Wheels.