Lotus Mountain Bike

[Paul S4]

A pal of mine has an original Lotus Sport Medina Green mountain bike which he has had since new. He has rarely used it, and has asked me to find out if it worth selling and where would be the best place to advertise etc. I seem to recall that he may have tried eBay last year, but without success.
He has no idea what he should ask for it; it cost him about £600 when new in 1993. The bike is completely original, even down to the tyres.
Any advice would be most welcome.

[big.eck]

www.retrobike.co.uk


thats where i'd sell it...........any pictures of it ?

[mk1fan]

ditto.

[Paul S4]

Thanks for the suggestion. I shall see if I can get a photo to post.

[Gooby]

http://www.aerotrope.com/bike05.html

Is this the bike?

[Paul S4]

That is a bit too modern...! My pal's bike is more traditional in design, and not made of carbon-fibre.

[Paul S4]

This is the Lotus Mountain bike that my pal is wanting to sell. Thanks for the suggestions about where to advertise.

[Beyond Rational]

I think the retro bikers will wet themselves when they see that!

[village idiot]

weren't the lotus bikes basically rebadged british eagles?... if i remember rightly, mike burrows who was the genuis behind chris boardman's olympic-winning bike (based on his windcheatah design and mono-blade fork) signed over the branding rights to lotus... he then went off to do some very cool things for giant.

lotus then effectively dumped the burrows design (it would have been silly-expensive to build them for production) and basically peddled any old ste with fancy lotus logos attached.

i might not be 100% correct on all of this, but i'm pretty sure burrows didn't do too well out of it all... a shame because he was a really really nice guy (i met him a few times whilst working with mike nelthorpe of hq fibres products to do my a-level D&T project... mike was building the mono-blade fork for limited production.

[Goodwood]

I've got one of these but its not anywhere near as tidy. You are quite correct it is a rebadged British Eagle, with a mid range shimano group set. Really it was quite nice for 94' as very little had front suspension at that time for the price, but was just a badge engineered British Eagle. It even had a sticker sayinng 'By British Eagle' on the chain stay

[wobert]

village idiot said:

weren't the lotus bikes basically rebadged british eagles?... if i remember rightly, mike burrows who was the genuis behind chris boardman's olympic-winning bike (based on his windcheatah design and mono-blade fork) signed over the branding rights to lotus... he then went off to do some very cool things for giant.

lotus then effectively dumped the burrows design (it would have been silly-expensive to build them for production) and basically peddled any old ste with fancy lotus logos attached.

i might not be 100% correct on all of this, but i'm pretty sure burrows didn't do too well out of it all... a shame because he was a really really nice guy (i met him a few times whilst working with mike nelthorpe of hq fibres products to do my a-level D&T project... mike was building the mono-blade fork for limited production.

Correctomundo.

I worked at Lotus Engineering during the early to mid '90s.

After the Barcelona Olympics, they had a tie up with British Eagle. Not only did they "create" a range of Lotus Sport bikes using BE bikes as a base, but they also had access to a full range of accessories, parts etc.

As an employee, we could purchase any BE bike, Claud Butler, Townsend, together with a full range of accessories, helmets, tyres, lights etc. You name it we could get it - best of all, it was all at cost price minus 15%!

Quite a few bods bought top of the range LS bikes (retailing for c£1200 - 1500) for less than half of that. I recall going into Halfords at the time and my jaw hitting th floor such was the level of mark up. Needless to say I never bought any bike kit other than through work at that time!

Beware of the frames though - some of the lower spec LS bikes used 1000 and 2000 series aluminium - the 1000 series in particular has mechanical properties similar to plasticine!