I'm looking at possibably building up a nicely lugged premium cro-mo Lotus. The thing is it is l80's made in Taiwan circa 86-89 not sure on date. My question is what is the difference in value and quality and anything else from a Japanese built Lotus. It seems like a great super light steel bike with a lot of potential.

Lotus and other mfgrs move to areas with lower manufacturing costs to allow them to produce a better products at the same cost or simply lower cost goods. A Japanese Lotus may hold a greater value than a Taiwanese one but the quality and condition is very important.

I just picked up Lotus for myself!

From what I have seen the Taiwanese Lotus bikes vary in quality much more than the Japanese Lotus bikes, even among the same production run. If you have a nicely made one, then it's probably a good bike. Like Frank said, Lotus used Taiwanese production to offer a bike at an even more competitive price.

If you buy a Japanese Lotus you are almost guaranteed quality construction, but be careful with the Taiwanese bikes.

I consider the Japanese Lotus bikes more collectable/valuable than the Taiwanese bikes, but that is just my personal opinion. I look at the Taiwanese Lotus bikes as a sub-class of Lotus, I wish Lotus had sold them with a different name. You can almost tell that Lotus introduced the Taiwanese bikes to meet a price point, not because they were great bikes.

Below is a photo of some very poor brazing on an earlier Taiwan Lotus Elite, note the crack on the fork crown point and the big glob of braze on the seat stay cap. I've never seen anything like that on a Japanese Lotus.

Well I built th bike up and while nice It was a sad sorry cuisen of the Japanese ones one of which I have owned. While it has frame with top guality tubing Tange tripple butteted? no tubing label. When cleaning I noticed the lug work was very good in places mainly where you look like the head tube, but BB not so good, fork welded not lugged on only OK, rear dropouts so copies of Suntour. When I undid the bar tape the bars where cheap steel whith bad chrome and the brake levers I thought were polished alloy steel also.
Then theres the wieght 25lbs plus even with the upgrades and decent light 700c wheels and tires, bars, crankset Supper Maxi with nice slyvan pedals (yes I'm rethinking this one they may go on another build).


Basicaly to build it decent I replaced everything except the dia-compe brakes and Acu-**** dr/ shifters which may go lesson learned there is a huge difference between Japanese and Taiwanese Lotuses.
Also I got some flack from the coop building this one and it's still not right, I will likely nevery buiild up a Taiwanese bike ever again and stick to real Japanese.

uh, that came out pretty nice man....no regrets there...