Perhaps I'd better not mention that we almost bought one of those back in the 80s then, eh Mike ? In my defense it was back in the days when we needed hauling capacity and we were running a Reliant Scimitar GTE as a daily car. A good friend at work had a blue Elite and I'd just assumed it would be a bit heavy & ponderous like the Scimitar.
Wrong ! They really are surprisingly good cars if you need 4 seats and with my rose-tinted specs on I seem to remember it being very impressive. Much faster than mine and it didn't go all wobbly at the sight of twisty roads. I remember talking about buying one & checking prices but for some reason it just faded away.
They do look very dated now, don't they ? All square, boxy dashboards and in truth you're right, they haven't stood the test of time like the original Elite has. Incidentally they're very cheap over in the UK, a couple of grand will buy you one but I think the spares situation isn't good.
Brian