If you want to see everything at the Classic Motor Show, you’re going to need a full day to get around it all. Set across several halls of the NEC, it was packed with club stands, dealers  and parts sellers that offer an almost mind-boggling array of displays. 

Thankfully, if your focus was Lotus they were more or less all in one place. Hall 3 was home to a cluster that included Club Lotus, the Lotus Grand Tourers, the Sunbeam Lotus Owners’ Club and, back at the NEC for the first time in six years, the Historic Lotus Register. The Lotus Drivers’ Club was remote from the main herd with a large stand in Hall 1.

That’s where we started early on day one of the show. Classics and modern classics shared the spacious stand. An Eclat and Esprit duo represented Lotus’s wedge era, while three aluminium chassis cars completed the line-up: Elise S1, the first ever Exige S1, an Elise Sport 220 and an Exige Cup 360.

The Lotus Grand Tourers stand was deliberately less varied. In this anniversary year, they had three Eclats on the stand, punctuated by an Esprit to remind us that they’re not only about front-engined wedges. Across the aisle, the Sunbeam Lotus Owners’ Club was even more single-minded, variety here provided by a mix of road-going and competition-spec cars.

The Club Lotus stand included a mix of eras. A menacing looking matt black Exige Club Racer and Elise R represented the modern classic era, while classics were covered by an Elan, Europa Twin Cam, Essex Esprit, Excel and Cortina. The Historic Lotus register delved further back in time. Their display included an ex-Alan Stacey Mark VI, an Elite Type 14, a Type 47 that had recently been restored by Classic Team Lotus and a Typr 69 Formula Three car. Taking centre stage was the recently rediscovered Eleven speed record car, which was thought to have been lost. We’ll have more on that in the magazine soon.

A treasure hunt of other Lotuses was dotted around the show. In the Vauxhall corner we found a display of Lotus Carltons, along with a home-brewed Lotus Senator. The auction featured numerous Lotus Cortinas, plus an Elan M100, Europa SE and Vauxhall VX220 Turbo. We honed in on the Eclat prototype, which sadly failed to sell. We also stumbled across the Analogue Automotive Terra on the Pipercross stand and a Troll trials car with what looked liked a Lotus Twin-Cam engine. It was actually Twin-Cam head on a 2.0-litre block.

After two full days at the show, we still felt we may have missed something. But here’s our gallery from what proved a great show season finale for 2025.

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