Korean automaker Kia wasn’t exactly known for building quality desirable cars in the 1990s, when it was mostly cranking out economically sound vehicles like the Mazda-based Sephia and Sportage. These were a step up from the Kia-built Ford Festiva and Aspire, but barely. The brand was on the lookout for new ways to deliver a prestige halo model to bring traffic into dealers, and when Lotus ended production of the M100 Elan in 1995, it found what it was looking for. Kia purchased the tooling and production rights from a cash-strapped Lotus and created the Kia Elan/Vigato.
Lotus, half a decade earlier, was looking to recreate the compact and lightweight magic of the original Elan. In 1989, it introduced the front-wheel drive compact, featuring a fiberglass body over a rigid steel backbone chassis. Most of them were powered by turbocharged Isuzu 1.6-liter 4XE1-MT engines, though a naturally-aspirated version was available initially. It would have been an absolute banger for the Brit brand, if it didn’t get immediately upstaged by a car much closer to the original Elan ethos, the far less expensive Mazda MX-5. After five years, Lotus had sold just 4,655 examples of the Elan, and shuttered the project.
For its part, Kia grabbed the cast-off Lotus from the dumpster bin and got to work making the car its own. The Alpine GTA-cribbed taillights were cast off for fresh bubbly units designed by Kia. This is pretty much the only way to identify a Kia Elan from the outside, but if you pop the hood, you’ll see a huge difference. The Isuzu motor is gone, replaced by a Kia-built T8D Hi-Sprint 151-horsepower naturally-aspirated engine, which is more or less a built-under-license version of Mazda’s venerable BP engine. So it’s even closer to a front-wheel drive MX-5 than Kia had built!
From 1996 to 1999 Kia produced just over 1000 examples of the ex-Lotus. It was sold exclusively to the Korean and Japanese markets, as the Kia Elan and Kia Vigato, respectively.
This particular car is available for auction over on Hemmings. The seller, who lives in Canada, imported a Vigato from Japan, inexplicably a left-hand drive example. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line a coward who was ashamed of driving a Kia-badged sports car replaced all of the original chrome ovals with stick-on Lotus badges. Also gone are the Hi-Sprint badges from the valve cover. If I were the buyer of this car, I’d get those Kia badges back on the car tout de suite.
I have test driven an M100 Elan, and unfortunately my American-sized midsection and 6’2″ height preclude me from comfortably wheeling it. My knees were just a smidge too close to the dash to be comfortable mashing pedals. Maybe with a thinner and lower seat, a taller person could fit. Sadly, I was much more comfortable in my old MG Midget than in one of these. I won’t be bidding against you. If you’re a little shorter and a little trimmer than me, you should go grab this one right now. It’s in Canada, but it’s old enough to import to the U.S. I’d venture it’ll be even more fun with the Kia engine than it was with the one Lotus shoved in there.