Lotus Elise Cup Car!

[Sizzle Chest]

2004 Lotus Elise Cup Car
Aubergine Metallic purple
16,000 Miles

I had a client bring me his Lotus track toy. He enjoys road racing with it and wanted it looking a little better than it was. It lives a rough life on the local Florida road courses and gets pretty hammered. I was up for the challenge!
The paint was very thin, averaging around 2.0 mils. I went into this thinking I was going to focus on correction, figured it’s better to be safe than sorry, so I focused on a major gloss enhancement with a minor in correction! The paint still responded very well to the correction and looks much better than before.

Processes/chemicals/tools/etc:
Rinseless wash with Adam’s rinseless wash, clay with Griot’s medium mitt, clay with McKee’s 37 clay, (Adam’s rinseless was used as lube), misc MF towels. Flex 3401, Rupes iBrid, Scangrip lighting, Metro vacuum, misc foam and MF pads. Test hit showed that it liked Sonax Perfect Finish so that’s what I used. I used McKee’s Fast compound on some areas that needed a little more cut.
Adam’s glass cleaner, CarPro Eraser, McKee’s 37 *new formula* paint coating, McKee’s 37 wheel coating, Adam’s VRT for tire dressing, Pinnacle exhaust cleaner and brightener on exhaust tip.

As usual, I believe that is everything. Comments and questions are encouraged!

Thanks for looking!



As delivered/defects/paint readings:


















Carbon fiber wing swirled up:






Not much here:





This is the clay AFTER I already clayed with a medium nano mitt.

[Sizzle Chest]

After the initial hit:




Headlights before:






Interior shots:

[Sizzle Chest]

After shots:

[Sizzle Chest]

[Sizzle Chest]

[upon3]

My daughters Elise and Violet would say that this car is meant to eventually be mine.




Stellar.

[Ronkh]

Great job!!

Love those cars. They came track ready out of the box, for not a lot of $$$.

[trashmanssd]

WOW thank you for sharing, amazing work on a very cool car. My back hurts just thinking about try to shoehorn my large posterior into that car.

[RaydiantDetail]

Great work on some thin paint!
I am really enjoying the Sonax compounds/ polishes lately.

[mc2hill]

Very cool car! It looks even better in the larger format pictures.

[Sizzle Chest]

Thanks for the comments everyone!!!!

[DOdetailing]

Always very impressed with your work. Looks great!!

[JustJesus]

nice job.

cool car!