Believe it or not we've seen what appear to be original parts date stamped almost two years older than the model year of the bike on some Lotus bicycles. Talk about using up old inventory.

Does your bike have LOTUS cast into the seat stay caps? If not it's 83-ish, caps were stamped LOTUS in 1984-ish. We're not sure exactly when that started it may just have been a running change and not a model year change. Lotus was very loose about model introductions and did not offer a catalog every year. I've been told that new models were often introduced by handing out flyers.

I've got a spare kidney if anyone has any.

Oh, not to hawk my stuff, but the Lotus decals will be available a-la-carte, so if you just need model names you can get just those and not have to buy a set for the whole bike.