The perfect future classic car?
02/09/2016
There is a lot of discussion about whether modern cars ever have a chance of maturing into classic cars. The obstacles are manifold: electronics problems, the complexity of spare parts logistics, elaborate design and therefore many sources of error, materials or processing methods that are no longer available, and so on and so forth.
If all of this is true and calls into question the ageing and future operation of a car, then we should be able to assume that a simply built vehicle with as few unnecessary components as possible, which at the same time has been constructed sufficiently often and perhaps even with standard components, has the best chance of survival. The first-generation Lotus Elise immediately springs to mind as an example.
Its composite chassis was intended to be reasonably durable, the engines came (originally) from Rover, hardly any unnecessary accessories were fitted, and finally the car was primarily intended to be light and sporty.
Does that make it the perfect future classic car? Perhaps, but we won't have to wait that long to find out, because the first examples are already 20 years old (happy birthday!) and will be 30 years old by 2026.
