Man buys salvage title Lotus supercar for $20,000 but his mechanic has devastating news to break to him

Tyler Hoover has achieved a dream of supercar fans everywhere by buying a salvage title Lotus supercar for $20,000.

The car in question happens to be the legendary Lotus Elise.

He also could not believe that he’d managed to buy this Lotus supercar so cheaply.

But his mechanic ended up delivering some devastating news to him.

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Kansas YouTuber bags himself Lotus supercar

Today’s story comes to us courtesy of a man named Tyler Hoover.

Tyler, as you might know, runs the incredibly popular YouTube channel Hoovie’s Garage.

The Kansas native has become a specialist at buying and restoring supercars from the recent past.

Earlier this year, Tyler went viral for buying and restoring an Iron Man-spec, first-gen Audi R8.

Now, Tyler has bought himself another supercar – but this one is quite different.

It is, as a matter of fact, a second-generation Lotus Elise.

The video kicks off with the YouTuber giving a bit of an origin story.

He explains that a viewer of the channel emailed him to let him know that he was selling his Elise.

Tyler then put in an offer of $20,000, which landed him this blue example.

In fairness, the actual paint finish was pretty uneven, with several rough spots.

But Tyler was still thrilled that he officially owned a Lotus Elise – although it had a salvage title.

During a walk-around, the Kansas native made an interesting point.

Unlike the first-gen Elise, the second-generation that hit the shores of the US came with a different engine.

It came, in fact, with a Toyota performance engine – with a little cam-head touch from Yamaha.

This made the engine extremely punchy and rev-happy from producing 190hp.

The YouTuber also found the car a pretty comfortable fit – despite being on the taller side.

Tyler takes Lotus to get checked out – and is devastated

Tyler then took the Lotus supercar out for a spin on the way to get it checked out.

It drove ‘like a go-kart,’ and provided amazing performance due to being so low to the ground.

The Lotus supercar was then taken to Tyler’s friend, Car Wizard, who happens to be an excellent mechanic.

The pair wants to take a look at the Elise to see if there are any concerning issues.

Thankfully, the mechanic couldn’t see much wrong with the car – apart from some blown shocks.

The clutch sounded like it was starting to slip – but so far, so good…right?

As is standard, the pair retired to the Wizard’s office to work out the cost.

Repairing the clutch was estimated to be around a 10-hour job.

Overall, the cost of clutch repairs came in at $2,500.

Not brilliant, but not as bad as it could have been, without a doubt.

Tyler can also get used shocks with a good warranty for around $1,000.

The total bill comes to around $4,500, which Tyler claimed would leave him ‘upside-down’.

Given that he was hoping that the repairs would be very cheap, the news was quite devastating to Tyler.

But, it’s an extremely cool little supercar – and it will make an amazing project.