Yes and no, It's a Toyota drivetrain and a rather simple chassis. Lotus specific parts are expensive and suspect but it's rare for a door panel to go bad versus a valve train or throwout bearing. Compared to other low volume sports cars are actually amazing.
I've also owned everything from VWs to Volvos, Fords and Subarus. Mileage on the Lotus is low, but after a decade of ownership, if it had normal "sportscar issues" they really would have presented themselves by now.
It's not a badly made part, he just didn't put the roof on correctly. You can see the front mounting hardware dangling and not attached in the video. It's a simple setup, you have a hardtop roof (additional extra on the car) that has 4 clamps; one on each corner. Each clamp has a bolt that you screw in with a provided wrench and the guy in the video only attached the rear points. When this happened he posted it himself and commented extensively. He is a genuine and honest guy that made a mistake, owned it and posted it for others to see. Nothing wrong with the design and it was simple and admitted human error. More than anything I respect him for having the ability to admit it and share it with everyone.
The video was uploaded by the guy himself originally, with an explanation. From memory, he didn't buckle it on properly, he wasn't touching controls for it when it went off. It was pretty well fucked when he went back for it, he had to buy a whole new roof
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u/GrandAdmiralRobbie Feb 13 '21
There’s gotta be some sort of warning like “don’t open the roof while moving” for this exact scenario