Mike, My JPS Esprits have black/gold badges. My '86 Esprit hci has a black badge.
My Europa TCs, JPS Europa and 61 FF have green/yellow badges. I don't remember what my Elite 503 has. Phil Mitchell Maryland -----Original Message----- From: Mike Causer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 10:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [lotus-cars] Black badges There are a number of different stories about the black badges fitted to Lotus, generally disagreeing with each other. So, to fill a rainy afternoon I decided to see if there is any usable evidence of the use of different coloured badges. Time travelling back to look at the production lines proved too difficult, but there is a form of time travel available in the collected books of magazine road tests, mainly published by Brooklands Books -- and conveniently to hand following another investigation ;-) Now we have to make some assumptions, but I think quite reasonable ones. First, a car supplied by Lotus for a magazine to test will have the badging used in production at the time it was made and registered. (We know their engines weren't always standard, but that's a different concern.) There is a caveat here, an importer might decide to change badging to fit their own preference, but at the time in question Lotus had different importers for the East and West coasts of the USA, so any switches probably won't be consistent. Another possibility is that Lotus themselves switched badges to reflect the current production, but this isn't borne out out by the tests wich invariably show that any individual car has the same badge all through its active life of up to a year. Is the frequency of published tests enough to give a good picture of production? From 1962 to 1982 I've found 160 tests, and 8 a year would seem to be adequate. Only tests of "new" cars are taken into account, those that have been modified by dealers (eg BRM, Else, B&C) are not taken into account, nor are articles about used cars. Let's clear one other problem area -- the very first black badge was made specially for Sales Director Graham Arnold, and fitted to his personal car which also had non-standard black paintwork and non-standard red leather interior. Plus a well-tweaked engine of course... OK, now for my findings..... 62 - mid 68 everywhere yellow/green mid 68 - mid 71 UK & AUS black/silver, USA mainly yellow/green mid 71 - 74 everywhere mainly yellow/green 74 - 83 everywhere black/silver for Elite/Eclat/Esprit Yes, most of the tests of USA-spec cars in the USA had yellow/green badges while the rest of the world had black/silver for three years. And, *all* Elite/Eclat/Excel/Esprit had black/silver badges, not one had yellow/green. Does this account for the perception in the USA that black badged cars are rare, while the UK thinks they're pretty common? Let the cries of "Burn the heretic!" begin ;-) Mike -- Mike Causer Email - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG KeyID 1C2DDA07 WWW - http://www.mikecauser.com Flood the fen again! - Wicken Fen enlargement - http://www.wicken.org.uk Yahoo! Groups Links Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lotus-cars/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
