By Michael Pawlowski
We purchased our Lotus Elise in the summer of 2015. My son had been keeping an eye on the inventory of a used car dealer in the Chicago suburbs that specialized in Lotus cars, and when they came up they usually sold quickly. My son called me at work when a low mileage 2006 in Laser Blue over Biscuit popped up on the dealer’s website with a “Details Coming Soon” note, and no pictures, and no price. “Could we go tonight and look at it before it sells?” he asked. After a polite laugh I agreed and he called the dealer to see if we could take a look at the car that day. It was currently at the detailer near the dealer so we couldn’t drive it but we could come by and look at it. The car was in fantastic condition and it even still had a small piece of the delivery wrap, about the size of my pinky, under the driver’s side door sill near the back of the door opening.
We went home to do a little homework on a price to negotiate toward and to see if we could figure out where the car had been. CarFax showed it had spent time in New Mexico with just one previous owner. All it took was Googling the VIN to find the previous owner on a Lotus forum. He had posted pictures of the car on a few sites and the small piece of delivery wrap at the bottom of the driver’s side door sill was visible in some pictures. As far as we could tell, that owner had never posted about tracking the car or trouble maintaining the car, so we went back to the dealer the following day and became proud first time Lotus owners.
We joined Lotus Corps a month later and enjoyed our new car and new friends and club activities all summer. When winter came to Chicago the car went into storage. The following summer we tracked the car for the first time and attended many car shows where we got to know a number of Elise owners and lots of trivia about our model. Winter came again and off to storage the car went again. But what is a Lotus owner to do when he can’t drive his car? Think and read about his car of course. My son had become active on Lotus Talk and had spotted some posts mentioning how happy a few owners were after contacting the factory to get a copy of the car’s provenance. After poking around Lotus’ website he found the Certificate of Provenance Service is offered by Lotus. The page gave a price range for the service but no electronic way to pay, instead they asked that you E-mail or call Andy Graham in the Lotus Archives.
As Christmas started to approach it occurred to me that getting the provenance for our car would be a good gift for my son. I sent Andy Graham an E-mail inquiry to ask what information I needed to send in, how to pay, and if it would be possible to have it sent over to the U.S. before Christmas arrived. A few days later I received a very nice reply from Andy that contained a light sprinkling of British humor and the details I needed: Send the VIN, I could pay by sending two separate E-mails with separate halves of my credit card, and yes doing the research in the Lotus archives could take a few weeks, but it should be ready before Christmas. The service also provided a choice between a standard certificate or an additional search which would show how many other cars of the same model year and market have the same color, trim, and options as your car and where your car came in the build sequence for that same model year and market. It was very nice to see that a kind person had taken an interest in my request and not some automated process. I quickly sent back a thank you and the VIN, and two separate emails to pay for the provenance and additional search.
Christmas neared but I hadn’t seen anything in my mail yet, so I started to wonder if I should quickly look for another Christmas gift for my son and save the provenance for his birthday. I sent Andy a short E-mail to ask how things were progressing and to let him know that I could switch my plans if he was backed up or the post between the UK and Chicago was going to take too long during the Holidays. I quickly received a reply from Andy saying he was close to completing the research and instead of just air mailing the documents he had prepared he would also send me PDFs of them so there would be something to share on Christmas morning. I couldn’t stop smiling. Andy was a treat to correspond with and very thoughtful during what was probably one of the busier times of the year for him. The PDFs arrived in my inbox a few days later and the documents arrived just before Christmas on beautiful paper. My son was very pleased with my gift idea, and with the information revealed in the Lotus archives.
If you would like to get a provenance for your Lotus, head over to: www.lotuscars.com/ownership/certificate-provenance and read the details on what is possible. You may learn some interesting facts about your Lotus that you haven’t uncovered yet.
