Lotus Europa Community

Now that appears to be far more substantial...and time consuming to fabricate.  Here are some pictures from the old Europa Registry to illustrate the source of my angst.  The baffling thing is that the right side rockers, like mine, are smoothly shaped sans swale.

Do you have any pictures?

https://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=5140.msg55529#msg55529

This is what I have.  I am very happy wit it.

It went for $15,000. Very anticlimactic bidding at the end. There didn't seem to be many people watching. It was a nice enough car. but I didn't think it was anything special. I thought the buyer got a good deal and seeing as how the seller didn't seem to be present at the end, it seemed like he just wanted to be rid of it - and that's what he got. 

Very interesting.  Though I can not see mine, it does "feel" like the one in your top photo.  If so, it is understandable that my four bolts are snugly spinning with their respective nuts due to rust. 

My assumption is that the factory inaccurately jigged up the belt mounts first then assembled the seat bucket/inner rocker section to the outer rocker/body section. They then cinched up the jack bolts to the brace which created the swale.  The right side was jigged correctly and has no swale.  It is difficult to grasp why the engineers felt those .090" brackets could support the weight of jacking up the car in the first place. 

If and when I ever pull the engine/transaxle I'll get in there and resolve the problem properly and be sure to tack weld the nuts onto the new brackets. 

Sorry to bore you all with this issue, but I find these obscure idiosyncrasies of Lotus cars to be fascinating.  These oddities are part and parcel of the joy of owning a limited production hand built car, despite the accompanying frustrations.