Remember this episode of Top gear from 2002, when they got Lotus to pimp some guy's Lada?

YouTube - CarAReOK Lotus Lada

The only update I can find is from some blog that the original owner posted in January 2006. Anyone know what happened to it?

I'm sure most of you all know that my 1996 Lada Riva was made over by Lotus

cars ltd in 2002' date=' on behalf of BBC Top Gear. It emerged as a complete one off

with over £100,000 spent on modifying bodywork, suspension, full race tuned 2

litre twin cam engine and a luxurious bespoke interior. sadly I had to sell

it in 2003 mainly due to financial constraints ( my wife had just given birth

to our first child) and the car subsequently went to a german Lotus nut.

Well, The chap is now selling the car, he's setting up a business overseas

and needs to sell this unique, and very fast (237Kmh) Lada! there were a few

teething troubles when I sold it on, which he has thrown huge sums of money

at and managed to sqeeze a few more BHP out of it to boot! (180+ Bhp) he's

spent about 20,000 euro's including the purchase price and is hoping to re-coup

as much of this back as possible. I realise that this is well beyond the

means of most of you chaps out there, but there must be someone interested in

taking this totally unique car on. please spread the word, if anyone is

genuinely interested please contact me off group. [email'][email protected][/email]_

(mailto:generalladavich@aol....)

I will then pass your email onto Stefan and he will send you a full spec

and photo's of the car, and details of how to contact him directly. please

please please, NO DAYDREAMERS OR TIMEWASTERS! This car is a serious bit of kit

and is not for the faint-hearted or the skint!

Paul.S

You're upgrading then

It's on about the third owner since the Top Gear show IIRC - it seems to get mentioned from time to time on different forums.

I'd swap the Mazda tomorrow for the Lotus Lada.

The guy in Germany seemed to have some problems with it though.

'My' mechanic, years ago used to drive and race a prepared Lada (IIRC that had a Fiat engine in and pushed out around 180BHP). He used to embarrass an awful lot of expensive machinery both on and off track

'My' mechanic, years ago used to drive and race a prepared Lada (IIRC that had a Fiat engine in and pushed out around 180BHP). He used to embarrass an awful lot of expensive machinery both on and off track

lol... no timewasters...

I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to spend a hundred grand on re-creating a 124 Arbarth!

the didn't spend 100K on it, what they did would have cost 100K, as in 1000 hours at Lotus mechanics prices, a fully rebuilt and madly tuned engine(180bhp from a N/A 1.5) and a complete rebuild of the body with a bespoke interior. I think Lotus would cost more than your average dealer and i don't know about skoda but my local ford dealer is about £85 an hour so thats already 85K simply in time then add the engine and body work.

Did you actually listen to the video at all? It's a 2.0ltr Fiat TC with 180+ bhp.

Lovely car that, very unique. Although, i did have an unfinished project in my garage years ago, standard Lada Riva, with a standard fiat twinky in there. Didnt have the cash to finish it sadly.

One of the best engines of our time the Fiat/Lancia 2.0 twin cam.

Did you actually listen to the video at all? It's a 2.0ltr Fiat TC with 180+ bhp.

if your talking to me sorry for getting one detail wrong, its a 2.0 not a 1.5

the didn't spend 100K on it, what they did would have cost 100K, as in 1000 hours at Lotus mechanics prices, a fully rebuilt and madly tuned engine(180bhp from a N/A 1.5) and a complete rebuild of the body with a bespoke interior. I think Lotus would cost more than your average dealer and i don't know about skoda but my local ford dealer is about £85 an hour so thats already 85K simply in time then add the engine and body work.

And that is exactly where I have the issue; I think they spent about 900 hours recreating development work that had already been done by someone who is at least as good as Lotus!

interior, 3 blokes 5 days(rough estimate) 135 hours

engine, 1 bloke 10 days 90 hours

body work, 4 blokes 10 days 360 hours

suspension work 1 bloke 2 days 16 hours

brakes 1 bloke 2 days 16 hours

exhaust 1 bloke 1 day 8 hours

just a quick guess and estimate of time and were around 650hours let alone the people "managing" the project and all the other work that was done. you don't have to be doing R&D to quickly tot up a lot of man hours on a project if they are doing it in a very short period of time and throwing people at ti left right and centre. they probably did use tried and tested methods but they will still take time to do