Lotus Elite Type 75 spotted street-parked in L.A. looking its faded beautiful best

A British shooting brake isn’t something you run into every day.

With less than 2,530 Lotus Elites made and only about 600 making their way to American shores, finding one in the wild is uncommon. So when David Obuchowski found one street-parked in Los Angeles looking haggard as ever, he knew he ran into some rare wheels.

Check out his tweet with photos below.

Wait…WHAT?! Found this parked right up my block pic.twitter.com/UzDqxZvoLF

— David Obuchowski (@DavidOfromNJ) March 2, 2020

Although Lotus is known for its light-weight two-seaters, there are a handful of four-seaters in the company’s history like the Eclat, this Elite, Excel, and the Evora as of late.

The Type 75 was in stark contrast to its lighter sibling, the Type 14. With a higher price tag, two extra seats and a luxurious interior, Lotus was punching up its weight class for the first time in the company’s historically niche, sporty history.

The Elite’s shooting brake styling is thanks to Oliver Winterbottom, known for designing the never-to-be replacement for the Jaguar E-Type, the X21, before working at Lotus. Winterbottom says Colin Chapman himself supervised the design of the Elite.

Under the hood of this Lotus Elite is a 2.0L inline four-cylinder that makes around 155 HP, enough to propel this British four-seater to 60 MPH in an OK 11.4 seconds. Put your foot down long enough and you’d eventually reach 111 MPH.

This particular faded Lotus Elite is supposedly daily-driven in and around Los Angeles regularly. I found two other spottings of this Elite on Instagram in all its base coat glory.

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Late 70’s, beat-to-hell, Lotus Elite type 75. Not something you see everyday. #lotuselite

A post shared by Hans DeKline (@hansdekline) on Mar 12, 2019 at 11:24am PDT

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Between 1974-1982, just over 2500 of these Lotus Elite (Type 75 and Type 83) “shooting brakes” (essentially a sporty mini-station wagon) were produced, so you won’t stumble across many of these in your day-to-day lives. Apparently, in its day, this was once the most expensive 4-cylinder car on the market. #britishcars #shootingbrake #carstylela #lotus #lotuselite #survivorcar #lotuscars

A post shared by CarStyleLA (@carstylela) on Jan 24, 2020 at 1:41pm PST

According to one reply on Twitter, this Elite is also a regular at the annual Queen’s English Car Show in Van Nuys. You can see a photo of this Elite on slide 18 of 21 in this AutoWeek.com post.

Although the Elite had the title of “Most expensive four-cylinder” when it came out, it seems few really want them as evidenced by how cheap they sell for once they come to market. There’s donated one on Copart two years ago and two that sold on BAT for less than $4,000 in far better condition than this faded red one.

If you ever come across one for sale, I don’t think you’ll have a hard time buying it.

Despite its small fanbase, it’s great to see one in OK condition being cared for in the wild.