Just put on my sepia-tinted glasses.
Lotus stopped making the 7/Seven in the early 70s, when Caterham bought the rights. With the exception of a few track-car special limited editions, they've used names not numbers for road-legal cars since then. Fair enough, they used "Type XX" , "Type YY", etc as model numbers, (just like other manufacturers - BL using ADO--, BMW using E--), but the Lotus badging was always a name after the 7/Seven.
I knew two chaps in the late 70s who ran a BMW 633 and a Lotus Elite (breadvan back end) among other exotic stuff - Porsche 928, Fiat 130 Coupe... they owned a string of petrol stations.
I got rid of around 25 years of Motor Sport when I emptied my parents' loft in the late 90s. I can still see the backpages classifieds now. And some of their more unusual road tests - Citroen CX against Austin Princess. Two large left-field designs. One woefully under-developed, the other ahead of its time. Guess which was which.
Werthers Original, anyone?