When researching the history of these cars, determining which car is which can be quite difficult. Each car produced would have come from the Lotus factory with an assigned serial number (VIN). This number was hand-stamped onto an aluminum chassis plate, listing the chassis number and perhaps an engine number.
So obvious first step to identifying these cars would be to locate the chassis plate and simply read the serial number off the plate. Well, that if easier said than done in many cases… Some cars still have these plates, and some, either through crash damage or perhaps the ravages of time, have lost these plates.
While researching these cars, I do occasionally get photos of these plates – here’s a gallery of the ones I have:
