Auto100 - UK Trader in Sutton in Ashfield

[NicolasB]

My 2nd key was present..... but yes it is strange, but indicative of auto100 why they don't get a new key when they get the cars in, they are awful, quantity over quality every time, but they do offer good prices and they get away with it as dealers probably fix all the problems they miss or chose to ignore for most car companies...

Wow, @emiraspain is here!

 

[Beardedbradley]

I’ve removed it. Auto100 have taken ownership of the problems and we have reached a mutually acceptable position. My thoughts are still the same, if you go into the deal with your eyes open and check the car and everything is acceptable to you, then you probably won’t have an issue. But I do think that if you do have an issue, you’ll need to be prepared to fight your corner. You won’t have the motor ombudsmen to help you.

Good I’m pleased you’ve reached an acceptable position. It’s great looking car. I have dealt with them twice before but on the same vehicle.

 

[Orchardbike]

I purchased mine from Auto100 a year ago, I had the dash lit up like a Christmas tree by the time I got home, the dealer dealt with all of the issues though.
I suspect they reset all fault codes just before you arrive.
Car has been great since, no idea why I got a one year old car with only 400 miles on it, maybe a rejected one but it’s all ended up good in the end.

That’s good to know. While Auto100 and I have come to an agreement, my car is still having the gearbox/clutch investigated and it’ll still need to go in again to get both doors replaced and the door mirror looked at, at some point. But hopefully, after that everything will be good.

 

[Beachbum]

Glad it was sorted. The lack of a 2nd key and poor customer service seem to pale into insignificance, compared to what you have gone through
Well done for pushing it through

 

[anothersportscar]

It seems common knowledge now but they are selling rejected cars. Mine had so many issues when it went back to lotus in February. It was listed by Auto100 in August, disappeared for quite a while then listed again by them in November when it sold. I guess so long as you know what you’re getting into it’s ok and prices are attractive. Hope lotus is sorting these cars for customers no matter where they’re purchased from.

 

[Beachbum]

I bought mine from then in August. The story I got from them, was it was an ex-Directors car, that had been returned to the pool to be sold on.
I hope that is the real reason
So far nothing has happened to make me think its a resold, reject, but now I'm wondering.

Any idea if its possible to find out and how?

 

[Beardedbradley]

I bought mine from then in August. The story I got from them, was it was an ex-Directors car, that had been returned to the pool to be sold on.
I hope that is the real reason
So far nothing has happened to make me think its a resold, reject, but now I'm wondering.

Any idea if its possible to find out and how?

I can only think of previous owner on V5.

 

[JimH]

I bought mine from then in August. The story I got from them, was it was an ex-Directors car, that had been returned to the pool to be sold on.
I hope that is the real reason
So far nothing has happened to make me think its a resold, reject, but now I'm wondering.

Any idea if its possible to find out and how?

https://www.gov.uk/request-information-from-dvla you could check if it was registered to Lotus Cars Ltd. or someone else at first registration....

 

[Orchardbike]

Previous owner on my V5 says ‘Lotus’.

 

[anothersportscar]

Lotus Uk were apparently on the V5 for mine too with one owner. I don’t know how they’re doing that. Maybe it was just a bad dream.

 

[Beardedbradley]

Lotus Uk were apparently on the V5 for mine too with one owner. I don’t know how they’re doing that. Maybe it was just a bad dream.

One owner named as Lotus UK must be in-house cars or demos, two owner named as Lotus UK questions should be asked about the first owner.

 

[JClem]

One owner named as Lotus UK must be in-house cars or demos, two owner named as Lotus UK questions should be asked about the first owner.

Buyers need to be very cautious with cars previously owned by ‘Lotus’. My troublesome Emira was bought by Lotus Technology and I wouldn’t put it past them (Lotus or Auto100) to be shifting them on as “directors cars” or “demonstrators”. They certainly won’t be telling anyone the wiring harness has been replaced which caused a wiring failure, the passenger door has been replaced, the HVAC resistor has been replaced, every now and then it doesn’t start, and that the SOS warning won’t go away.

As far as I can tell they haven’t sold mine yet having bought it back from me in October.

 

[Nick in Sydney]

They might also have been used at the Lotus Driving Academy. Mileage would be a clue.

I don't know about Lotus, but Porsche's Experience Centre cars are flogged for a few months, then Porsche replaces the discs and tyres, and sells them. At least they're very well maintained by the Experience Centre team.

Think how many launches some of those cars have done! And did they bother with the break-in procedure? Also, I noticed that the seat bolsters tend to get trashed because they have dozens of people getting in and out each day.

 

[jonsealsportscars]

Buyers need to be very cautious with cars previously owned by ‘Lotus’. My troublesome Emira was bought by Lotus Technology and I wouldn’t put it past them (Lotus or Auto100) to be shifting them on as “directors cars” or “demonstrators”. They certainly won’t be telling anyone the wiring harness has been replaced which caused a wiring failure, the passenger door has been replaced, the HVAC resistor has been replaced, every now and then it doesn’t start, and that the SOS warning won’t go away.

As far as I can tell they haven’t sold mine yet having bought it back from me in October.

I think it's a bit hard to avoid Lotus pre owned it seems the vast majority of UK cars are Lotus pre reg. They had a tsunami of cancelled orders and what it looks like is that they have run the cars for 1-4000 plus miles then put them out onto the market as a "used" car. Clearly there are cars that have been backed with issues and put back out to market via none franchise dealers you can probably connect the dots there.

It's absolutely extraordinary that a none franchise dealer has ended up with so many cars but I guess the few remaining sales franchises simply couldn't soak up the supply of cars and they had to go somewhere.

If you are new to Lotus in the UK the plates AU AO AP are Usually factory cars. They could also be factory collected cars though but in the main they will be factory cars that have been run around by Lotus staff to put miles on them. They don't use enough cars at the academy for all these cars to be to be ex track. It would be very interesting to see just how many people cancelled orders in 22/23 its been a while apparently since they actually built a UK car and obviously Lotus have said no more for 2025 production so they must still be sat on a good few.

 

[Beardedbradley]

I did find it strange Auto 100 have so many. I know my local Lotus had a job lot of lightly used vehicles arriving in November after a couple of weeks they informed me they had pulled out of the deal. It’s anybody’s guess why my personal opinion is the parent franchise dealer didn’t want the stock as they already had cars not moving. But maybe there was something else.

 

[freefall_junkie]

It would be very interesting to see just how many people cancelled orders in 22/23 its been a while apparently since they actually built a UK car and obviously Lotus have said no more for 2025 production so they must still be sat on a good few.

Am I understanding this correctly, Lotus are not producing any new Emiras for the UK market in 2025? Good news if that is the case as the way they have shafted the UK market with over supply has been sad to behold.

 

[Nick Sticks]

Am I understanding this correctly, Lotus are not producing any new Emiras for the UK market in 2025? Good news if that is the case as the way they have shafted the UK market with over supply has been sad to behold.

It depends on how you interpret what is in writing i.e. actually on the Lotus website, rather than word of mouth and I heard this or that, which could still be true.
At the moment you can still go through the UK configurator and configure a V6 First Edition. At the end there is a note saying "Due to high demand, new orders for Emira V6 are scheduled for delivery in 2025", and that has been there for most of 2024. For a brief moment around May 2024 it was saying delivery would in 2026.
So from that you could say that if you ordered a UK car in January 2024 direct from Lotus like I did, you could expect it to be built and delivered in 2025.
However, with Lotus having many UK cars already built and in stock (for whatever reason) they really must want to sell those first before building anymore.
If you configure a new car now on the Lotus website, at the end all you can do is send the configuration to a Lotus dealer. They are obviously going to then see if there is an already built car close to your specification and get you to buy one of those.
There are currently 69 new Emiras on the Lotus website, all saying they are available from specific dealers indicating they are actually at those dealers. I suspect there are still quite a few somewhere in storage and not listed anywhere yet.
For someone in the UK now wanting a new Emira they have a dilemma. They could hopefully find one that is to their spec but then the question is when was it built? The longer they are standing around outside surely the more difficult they will be to sell hence why there are some low mileage cars coming onto the market.

 

[JimH]

If you are new to Lotus in the UK the plates AU AO AP are Usually factory cars. They could also be factory collected cars though but in the main they will be factory cars that have been run around by Lotus staff to put miles on them. They don't use enough cars at the academy for all these cars to be to be ex track. It would be very interesting to see just how many people cancelled orders in 22/23 its been a while apparently since they actually built a UK car and obviously Lotus have said no more for 2025 production so they must still be sat on a good few.

I believe that ALL UK Emiras were registered in Norwich (AO, AP, AR, AS, AT, AU) while the ill-fated factory-direct sales "experiment" ran - until some point in 2024 when they reverted to the dealer sales model and local registrations took place again.... Cars were delivered pre-registered for local dealer collection, home delivery or made available for factory collection under that model.

My car was originally an AU23 plate, factory registered, but was Hendy Southampton's dealer demo car (yes the factory registered those too on behalf of the dealers) from whom I bought it with just 254 miles recorded..... It's back in Norwich now in any case so not an issue (although personal plate on now!) for me....

 

[Orchardbike]

I believe that ALL UK Emiras were registered in Norwich (AO, AP, AR, AS, AT, AU) while the ill-fated factory-direct sales "experiment" ran - until some point in 2024 when they reverted to the dealer sales model and local registrations took place again.... Cars were delivered pre-registered for local dealer collection, home delivery or made available for factory collection under that model.

My car was originally an AU23 plate, factory registered, but was Hendy Southampton's dealer demo car (yes the factory registered those too on behalf of the dealers) from whom I bought it with just 254 miles recorded..... It's back in Norwich now in any case so not an issue (although personal plate on now!) for me....

Mine was bought from Auto100 on a ‘PJ’ plate, 2023 car, with 430 miles on it. Auto100 listed it on their website, before they’d actually received the car from Lotus.

So different reg and they must have regular cars coming in directly from Lotus, with various amounts of miles on them. The average is around 5k, but they have some with less than a 1000 miles and I saw a few with less than 100 miles on them. Not sure what that tells us?

 

[Beachbum]

Mine is an AO plate from Auto100. Was 4 months old and had 1300 miles on it
Strangely it had the Scorpion tracker fitted, but not activated, so pretty certain it wasn't a private owner