' Lotus took the standard 24V 3.0L block and bored it out to 3.6L'. Wrong. The standard 3.0L cylinder has a diameter of 95mm. The LC also has a bore of 95mm. What changed was the length of the stroke, which increased from 70mm to 84mm.

'1100 cars were produced'. Wrong. It is true that the original plan was for 1100 cars, but when the recession struck in the early 90's it proved impossible to sell all of these £48000 cars. In the end, the last 150 cars were never built. It is interesting that most if not alll of these (according to James Waddingtons web-site) should have been RHD UK spec cars (i.e. Vauxhall Lotus Carltons). The original plan was for 440 UK cars to be built, but in the end, only 284 were sold (plus 2 RHD examples to Singapore), so it was Vauxhall that let the side down, not Opel.

 

'They are all Black' . Wrong but an understandable mistake. All production cars are Imperial Green, which is a very dark green and looks black in anything but direct sunlight. Some of the pre-production cars were other colours, mostly silver, but these are not officially Lotus Carltons/Omegas, but are converted GSi3000's . Any car that isn't Imperial Green has either been resprayed, or it isn't a real LC.

'It isn't a real Lotus'. This comment is often made by Lotus Elise and Esprit owners. I do have some sympathy for this statement, because the cars were all initially built on the Opel production line at Russelheim in Germany, before being transferred to Lotus at Hethel. But the plain facts are that my log book shows a Lotus chassis number, the chassis number decodes to reveal the place of manufacture to be Hethel, and a panel under the bonnet shows the car is a Lotus Type 104.

' It isn't the fastest car ever - thats the XYZ'. Pay more attention. The claim is that it is the fastest production saloon car in the world. Production means that at least 500 cars were built, and saloon means 4 (or more) doors. Of course there are faster cars (McLaran F1's Ferrari's etc), but they arn't saloon cars.