Well for the Europa community and all the Specials out there, I hope he gets close to his asking price. It truly is a stunning car.
The only flaw I saw is the badly stained sun visor on the driver's side, and didn't like the clock either.
Dakazman
According to a few folks I know, it's been advertised since June of last year at that price. These things are worth what someone is willing to pay. 75,000 USD for a Europa, no matter how shiny the paint? Nah. IIRC a gent back in the '04 timeframe...spent close to 100G on a restoration. I mean it was perfect in every way. Not a ripple in the fiberglass, spent strong money having switches repopped, hand finished woodwork, leather interior, wilton carpets, shipped the engine over to wilkins for a no-holds-barred blueprinted motor, overspent on the body and paint at a well-known shop in PA...the lot. Sold at a loss, was next picked up by a philly lotus member for less than 40% of what the resto cost. It was beautiful. Even the phillips head screw heads lined up. And not worth even close to what he spent.
Maybe in a few decades, with inflation, the original ones in good nick may be worth that number. Few of the upcoming generations are interested in these cars, and as time goes by, even fewer sources for parts will be available (the enthusiast market and vendors of the 70s and 80s is aging out...). The supply of frames is dwindlng, knowledge of how to set up a carburetor (where do you plug in the laptop to map these things?), even ability to handle a manual tranny (what, no flappy paddles?) is becoming a lost art.
That the market (dreaming outliers such as this one notwithstanding) is pretty much, accounting for inflation, pricing these cars at the same general price for the last 20 years (you could have bought a runner in the mid aughts for 5-7K$ is now 15-20K$ 20 years later...parts cars for 2-3K$..I know, I deconstructed 4 of them) says, to me, enjoy what you have, but know that when you go to sell it...what you put into it should be considered the tuition you paid to have a part in owning a low-production, not well-understood by the public, and generally an oddball exercise to generate income for the boss to go racing.
As an investment? Probably the worse one you could make.
Just my contrarian opinion. Maybe he'll get his 50K UKP. Good for him. But that's not the indication that the market will support that for the middle of the bell curve, as much as we might want it to.
