Cool! Dig the vintage photos.
Vintage? Hey, I resemble that remark...
Thinking about it, that car was only a little over 12 years old when the first photo was taken...and here we are over 40 years later...and still fiddling with them.
It was amazing how deteriorated the car was when I bought her in 81, being it was only 11 years since it was new. Someone had taken the head off but managed to pop the cylinders off their bases, and left it that way, which pretty much roached the original engine. Best I could arrange was an original R16 sedan engine out of a wreck at the local foreign car breaker yard. I had just missed Lotus East's going out of business sale where they were selling in-the-crate engines for $200 and didn't know that Marco Competition had bought a car trailer load of them and were selling them for 500. installed. Original seats were toast (I put in TC seats since S2 seats were nowhere to be found), dashboard was a mass of crumbled veneer on the floor, no carpets, and the headliner was mildewed. Windscreen was mostly attached (I pulled it to repaint without breaking it...) but it had been stored on hard surface, so the frame was pretty much ok (I saw photos of it that the new owner took...no apparent weakness or holing). That it survived to this day, and is undergoing a frame-up, body-off renovation in North Carolina is a testament. Still a bit peeved that the seller didn't honor his offer of right of first refusal to me...but, I've my hands full with 3291R right now.
And all that work was done before we had the instantaneous gratification of the net, forums, mailing lists, ebay...and depended on phone calls to Fantasy Imports in MD, Ray when in his first location in Jenkintown PA, Frank at Sports Car World, and an occasional call to Mike Pomfret over at the factory (who was gracious in assisting, sometimes getting someone from the floor to talk me through something that wasn't clear in the workshop manual!) to figure out just what I should be attempting to do. It's been a good ride, in many ways, and I'm thankful I've had the opportunity to participate in the support of the marque.
