The Europa and the Exotic Car Food Chain

[BDA]

I've actually been fighting the "exotic" label. A local garage (Burnetts, Wenham, MA) specializes in Triumphs, Healeys, MGs, etc.. I asked them to help me get my Strombergs dialed in, but NOOOO! "Lotus is too EXOTIC for us." they said. "It's just a f@#king mish-mash of all the other cars you service!" I said, but to no avail. Sheesh!
t

Those guys are losers, Surf. IIRC, Triumphs use Strombergs (but maybe only one). Find a classic Jag shop. If your carbs don't need to be rebuilt or fitted with a new needle, most of it is balancing and setting the idle speed. I'll bet there are videos that can help.

Good luck!

[jbcollier]

Absolutely, there are, probably, many decent exotic car owners.  Given my profession, I have been exposed to them, and, unfortunately, the not-decent.  Here's one example:

Chap brought in an F355 for a timing belt change.  Told us not to start the engine because one of the belt idlers was in a bad way.  The manual says you have to pull the engine to change the timing belt but you can do it insitu if you have double jointed elbows and a very high tolerance for pain.  So I did the work without pulling the engine.  Fired it up afterwards and it's making a knocking noise.  Shut it down instantly and called the customer.  The customer said that it wasn't noisy before.

I was super careful doing the work but I guess I must have f***ed up.  Sh*t happens.  Best not to take life personally.

I pull the engine and check my work, it's perfect, no issues.  So we put the engine back in and fire it up again.  Still noisy, of course.  Do a bit of detective work and it has a bent valve on the left bank.  Talk to the customer and then the real story comes out.  He was driving it slowly up and down the strip, pausing to rev it up with the clutch in when it started making an awful clatter and he shut it down.

Now I'm into this thing for 20+ hours with very few billable hours in sight.  If he told me at the beginning what was up, I'd have thought him a bit of an idiot and then done the work.  Now?  I wouldn't work on his car, period.  It came on a  tow truck.  It left on a tow truck.

[dakazman]

   Even though we cannot enjoy reading this article it’s fantastic to see a Europa on the cover of a car magazine sharing a small picture of an eviga. That should raise an awareness of these beautiful works of art.
Dakazman

[literarymadness]

Lotus for the most part (at least in the states) is an automotive brand that most consumers have never heard of. I can't count the number of times I have been asked: "Who makes Lotus?" During the semester, I occasionally poll the students on cars.  The majority of students at the county college I teach economically fall in the Lower class to upper middle-class income.  Almost 99% of them have never heard of Lotus.  And Most have never heard of Aston Martin or McLaren either.  Forget about Koenigsegg or Pagani.  Almost everyone of them "are" familiar with Ferrari or Lamborghini.  Mention Supra, GTR, or NSX and every male student's eyes light up. Most of us bought a Lotus because we were somehow exposed to one in someway and we never forgot it. For me, I was a huge Formula 1 fan as a kid and as far as I was concerned, there were only two makes that mattered: Ferrari and Lotus. I was also an "Avengers" fan. Good enough for Emma Peel or Tara King then good enough for me.  Others knew someone who had one and couldn't get that image or sound out of our minds. Some of us were car magazine junkies like myself and memorized every cool car spec and Lotus was always near the top. I love my Europa.  With all its quirks, it is an automotive original work of art.

[BDA]

Agreed on all counts! Maybe if I had watched "The Avengers" more, I would have bought an Elan (Emma Peel there's nothing more to be said) but the truth is that I saw a real Elan long after I had bought my Europa.