Download of Mac OS Lion fails

Your mac is capable of running all OS's up to and including macOS Catalina.

But I would recommend trying to download and install Mac OS X El Capitan

or macOS High Sierra. You will need another mac to do this.

To download El Capitan you will need to find a mac that is capable of running Mac OS X El Capitan.

Click on this link,

How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support

Go to Section 4 and click on Download OS X El Capitan.

This downloads InstallMacOSX.dmg to your Downloads folder.

The next section can only be done on a mac that is capable of running El Capitan,

a mac that came preinstalled with an OS later than El Capitan will refuse to do the next bit.

When downloaded open to InstallMacOSX.pkg, double-click on

that and an installation window will open, this does not install El Capitan

but converts the InstallMacOSX.pkg to the Install OS X El Capitan.app which 

you will find in your Applications folder, it should be 6.2GBs in size.

 (If the installation window asks which disk you want to install to, you must pick 

the disk that you are booted to at the time. Not any internal or external disk that 

you want to eventually install El Capitan on, that is for later.)

You are now ready to create a bootable USB installer disk using the Install OS X El Capitan.app

in the Applications folder and the createinstallmedia command in the Terminal app. 

Read the instructions here,

How to create a bootable installer for macOS – Apple Support

The the bootable USB installer has been completed plug it in to your original mac.

Restart the mac while holding down the option/ alt key.

In a couple of minutes you will see the Startup Manager, select the USB and press Return.

The mac will now boot to the USB, a Utilities panel will open, select Install OS X and

press Continue.

If you prefer to download macOS High Sierra you will need to use a mac that is able to

run macOS High Sierra.

How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra - Apple Support

Go to Section 4 and click on Get macOS High Sierra

this will redirect you to the App Store High Sierra download page.

It should say Get or Download.

This will download Install macOS High Sierra.app directly to the Applications folder.

Now create a bootable USB using the instructions on the link from above.

When that is done transfer the bootable USB to the original mac, restart as described

above and then click on Install OS.

Greetings Eau Rouge,

I'm attempting to install El Capitan on my *formatted* iMac 27-Inch "Core i5" 2.7 (Mid-2011) Model: A1312 via your instructions above. I've downloaded El Capitan, used the Terminal commands to create a bootable USB Drive, and restarted my iMac while holding the OPTION key. The iMac recognizes the bootable USB drive and I select it. I then see the white Apple screen and a progress bar. Within two (2) minutes, the progress bar fills to roughly 60% then stalls. After 11 minutes (total elapsed time), the spinning color wheel is displayed (along with the progress bar) then shortly after that I see the spinning progress wheel--however, the progress bar never advances past 60%. I have no problems access the Mac OS X Utility via (CMD+R), however if I try to install LION from this recovery, I get the error, "Unable to download additional components..." I've power cycled the iMac by unplugging for 15secs., reconnect for 5secs, then turning on the iMac. I've also tried resetting the PRAM (CMD+OPTION+P+R). I'm still getting the same errors... Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I am unable to resolve this issue.

The certificates for several of Apples OS's expired in October 2019, Apple have been very poor at getting these updated on their Recovery Servers with valid certificates. This may be the problem you are experiencing. 

Try this workaround, we are going to set the time and date on your mac to a date previous to the expiry date of the certificates.

Connect your mac to your router via cable, not WiFi

Boot to your Recovery HD, click on Utilities in the menubar select Terminal.

Make sure WiFi is switched off, it can reset the date back to today.

Enter a new date, for example or just copy and paste

sudo date -u 011421002015

press Return

enter your password

press Return

If Terminal returns an error saying sudo : command not found, then try again without sudo.

Now try downloading the OS.

If this works then when the OS is installed and booted up you can Open System Preferences> Date & Time

and reset the time back to today.

the above may or may not work with the Apple Recovery Servers, more and more people are reporting

unsuccessful attempts to restore the OS from Apples Recovery Server.

The certificate for the USB installer will be expired to, so you may have to try the same procedure

of resetting the Date & Time in Terminal whilst booted to your Lion USB.

Other options would be to use another mac to download and create a bootable USB installer of

Mac OS X Yosemite or Mac OS X El Capitan, the donor mac has to be a mac that is capable of running

Yosemite or El Capitan.

The mac that you wiped, what year is it.