Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Anyone got any details on or experiences of South London / Surrey Lotus dealer Purley Performance Cars? They were active through the 60s and into the 70s and sold a lot of Elans apparently
Matt

Transition period from Purley Performance to B & C

Thanks for that rusty - much appreciated!

There is more on the Bell & Colvill web site:

"Bell & Colvill opened for business as a Lotus dealer in a 50/50 partnership on the 11th March 1970. Martin Colvill and Bobby Bell had independently sold Lotus cars since 1965. It was not purely franchised stuff - for a while some heavy exotics were on the forecourt, from Lamborghini Miuras to Ferrari Daytonas."

Tim

An interesting car in the photo - looks like a 1970 S4 with Strombergs ( from the throttle cable) and black badge but the larger S3 radiator ?. Maybe even back then the narrow radiator was seen as limiting ? or maybe Lotus ran out of the narrow radiators

cheers
Rohan

Hey - that's where I used to take my first Elan, when I lived near Godstone. A long time ago now. This must have been around 70-71. I don't remember there being a Bell and Colville connection, which isn't to say there wasn't one. As can be seen in the photo, the place was just a few sheds, but it was always busy.

It was just a service/repair place and didn't sell cars. Maybe there was another Purley location (on the A23?) where they sold cars?

There was a thread about the place a few years ago: lotus-talk-f50/anybody-remember-company-croydon-from-the-t23076.html

I still wonder what happened to the couple that ran the place. From Rusty&Dusty's post above it looks like the young woman who ran the office was Victoria Page (be still my beating heart!).

Nick