Hello Brian, all ours are 50s cars, 2 x DB2s & 2 x DB MkIII DHCs, the one DHC has been a rolling restoration & is the the only Classic on the road, all bought for peanuts as was the Cooper S & the Europa.
The Europa was actually 3rd choice, I had always wanted an Elan but never quite had enough money so we looked at +2s & had agreed to buy a one owner car locally in 1988 (not 87), we gave the guy the deposit & took away the History file & I kept asking when he wanted the rest of the money, he kept saying it didn't matter which should have rung alarm bells, then all of a sudden he wanted to give me my deposit back have his History file back, he kept it.
We then saw an Else S2 advertised for £2750 in Feb 89, it was the other side of Norwich which was difficult to get to in those days so my GF, my apprentice and I went down in the apprentices mothers new MG Metro (Rover car as his dad worked there), we looked around the car & I drove it round the block a few times then I argued about the price for 2 or 3 hours and settled on £2650 with its new rear springs/ shocks still fitted, he had owned it exactly a year.
I gave the keys to my GF (as my excuse for buying it was every car she had went rusty, a Lotus couldn't) & came back in the Metro, the Europa was a bag of rubbish, the GF hit a puddle at 70 in the pouring rain & went sideways at about 30/40 degrees to the road, we wondered where she went but she gathered it up & got back behind us quite quickly.
The front suspension had been assembled incorrectly, the gear linkage didn't work, etc.
Lotus Europa S2 was originally Lotus Yellow & was modified by JA Else, it came to me with an Else inlet manifold & 45 dcoe but not the red alloy finned crackle finish rocker cover which I still want to find / make.
6 weeks after buying it the GF rang up saying it wouldn't crank over, I was pretty busy at work so I rushed home in the Caddy, put the huge jump leads on & cranked it, a second or so later it dropped a valve, cracked a piston & split a liner, the reason was a dropped valve seat.
I found out by asking around that my friends at Aldon had a spare parts man called Salve Sacco who specialised in building Renault engines in the evenings & weekends, Salve gave me loads of advice & relieved me of plenty of money for parts building a crossflow motor.
I put 2 clutch cables on before I converted the clutch to hydraulic operation, a speedo cable before realising if you used a angle drive from a Midget the speedo cables lasted forever.
A few months later in August it cracked the chassis under braking whilst racing my brothers new VW Scirocco on local roads, the chassis had cracked by the wishbones so we bought a new chassis from Miles Wilkins near Goodwood circuit & fitted that.
