I was cruising down El Camino Real in San Carlos, CA, and saw a BRG Lotus
Seven or clone, complete with gold Minilite style wheels and beige soft top,
for sale on a used car lot. I seemed to remember it from a previous trip
some months ago, and had to know more of the story. I called, and was told
the following story. Feel free to do your Scotty B. (it stands for
"Bwaaaaaaaa!!!! Hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa!") White impression at any time.
"Yeah, the Lotus? It's actually a Donnelly, built in Canada from the
original plans. See, when Mr. Lotus died in 1963, he had the Elan and Europa
already on the drawing board, and didn't care about the Seven anymore. He
was the designer/driver of the cars, and had these two builders, Caterham and
Westfield both working for him.
Mr. Caterham and Mr. Westfield went to court in 1963 to see which one would
get the rights to all the tooling. There's about 50 different people
building replicas all over the world. This one's really nice. It's got all
Toyota running gear, about $6500 in carbs and head work on a 2TC Hemi engine.
It makes over 200 HP and weighs 1100 lbs. It's pretty much unbeatable on a
roadrace track or autocross course. I only want $25,000 for it."
I'm thinking he doesn't want to sell it THAT badly!
CHD
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