The Sprint colour schemes were Gold Lacquer front and rear bumpers, low gloss black wheels with chrome rimbellishers and either single (mono) colour or colour over white with Elan Sprint sidewinder decals, which were always gold. The under bonnet colour was Matt Black. Additionally, the body strip under the sills was always painted black by the factory to finish off the car.  

During the entire Elan production Lotus tried a series of new and experimental paint finishes; sometimes complete cars were painted in batches by outside contractors and sometimes cars were sold to dealers in primer, which allowed dealers to offer custom colours. Lotus would spray a car any colour the owner fancied. So the standard colours on the Sprint were drawn from the following list, though I acknowledge other colours were used on the S4/Sprints too.

Lotus ‘L’ prefix codes indicate nitro-cellulose paint used on the Elan. At the time there were two suppliers to the factory, Pinchin, Johnson and ICI. Pinchin, Johnson was taken over by Courtaulds and merged into their paints division when they bought International Paint. ICI was taken over by Nexa Autocolor.

From my records, the most popular standard original colours were:

First – Lotus Yellow

Second – Carnival Red

Third – Lagoon Blue

Fourth – Colorado Orange

The least popular standard original colours were:

First – White

Second - Regency Red (Maroon)

Third – Pistachio Lime Green

Fourth – Ford Tawny