I could be mistaken about this.
I looked at some old Europa books I have that were published around the time Europas were in production and I found these two pictures in the book, "The Lotus Elan and Europa" by John Bolster. It was published in 1980 so I will accept that the pictures are almost certainly production cars. The possibility that someone would dress up a car that is not much more than eight years old is possible but not that likely.
The top picture is how I remember the later cars with the champagne interior looked. The upholstered items (the seats, door cards, and elbow pad) are all champagne colored the console is black. The bottom picture shows a '72 (because of the idiot lights, in '73 they went with more and rectangular ones) with an upholstered console. As I say, it's possible that the owner had his console upholstered but given the age of the car, I'd admit that it is not that likely.
While I'm not entirely ready to throw my memory under the bus (that's already happened to it so many times already, it's very sad!), I will gladly do so if the fact that the factory upholstered the consoles is authenticated. I've emailed Andy Graham to see if he can clarify the situation. I'll post his reply.
