You don’t expect much of a donation from an old car that’s been garaged for a lifetime and neglected for even longer, but this one brought in a cool $8,000.

Lotus, shabby on the outside

It’s shabby, but it’s a 1964 Lotus Elan, a California black license plate car. Its condition? Even a generous appraisal would call it poor. It wasn’t running and hadn’t been registered for ages.

Here’s an interesting thing about the car donation world: most vehicle donation firms send unregistered and non-running older cars straight to recycle (or the chopping block).

We don’t – it’s that screening commitment we have. We look at every car before we move it along, and this is exactly what we did here.

What tipped me off, too, was that fact about the car being garaged for so long. Not just rotting in the backyard, but garaged. That tells me that someone had plans to restore it.

Lotus, shabby interior, beautiful donation

Apparently those plans did not come to fruition.

So, a charity benefited, and, OK, so did car enthusiasts. Once the new owner restores this little beauty, it’ll be on the road (or being raced), and that’s one great way to beautify a highway.

- Tim