How I came to be a Lotus Owner
(Warning - Long story with no pictures - only real lotusphiles should try this one)
I was fortunate enough to win the competition for a job in Europe (Luxembourg to be exact) for two years. I have always been a bit of a "car enthusiast" and having lived in Europe as a kid, I was somewhat familiar with the less well-known marques produced there. As a kid I had been impressed with things like E-Type Jags and Porches but I guess the Lotus Europa was always the most off-the-wall piece of automotive sculpture I can remember seeing in the flesh. (An interesting side note to this story is that the first E-Type I saw close-up was one owned and driven by a certain Lieutenant Lewis MacKenzie who stopped to visit my Dad - this is the same Lewis MacKenzie who went on to become Canada's most famous Peacekeeper and who commanded the UN troops in Bosnia when that trouble first began.) The next contact of any significance I had with a lotus was when I was attending university I owned a second hand Fiat X-1/9 and remember parking it next to a Europa and noting just how small those cars were.
While I was in Europe I decided I would investigate the options for bringing back a "unique" car. I started my search by obtaining a few copies of European classic car magazines. From these I learned the "market value" of most of the possible machines. It didn't take long for me to eliminate cars like Ferrari, Lamborghini etc. Porsche could have been an option but they are just "too common" and if I was going to do this it didn't make any sense to buy something that well known. I remembered my limited contact with Loti over the years and looked up the prices on Europas. I was disappointed to learn that they were becoming quite sought after and were becoming more expensive. The story has it that the Japanese have taken a real liking to them and are buying up many of the best examples at inflated prices for export to Japan. I don't know if that is true or not but I did notice that the early Esprits were available at a remarkably low price so I began to investigate this option.
The next step was to join the Lotus Club, order a few books and study the Esprit to see what I would be getting myself into. I learned a lot about the pros and cons of the various production series from this study. I had two constraints to worry about also. First, I was (am) poor and could not afford an expensive model. Second, to bring a car into Canada requires that it meet all Canadian standards and safety regulations UNLESS it is 15 years old or more. This meant that I could potentially buy a car as new as 1981 production year and this was fortunate for me because it meant that I could look at the first series 3 and early turbo cars. The turbos again turned out to be relatively expensive but the series 3 was not much more than the series 1 and 2 cars which had a reputation for being much more difficult to maintain. So, armed with my new knowledge and several classified listings of cars for sale, I started to phone. For obvious reasons, most of the cars I saw for sale were in the UK but I did call about one series 1 in Belgium. I didn't even look at that car because the owner wanted too much money for it. I found one series 3 being offered by a west end London dealer. It was having its engine rebuilt after a catastrophic engine failure and would not be ready for at least a month. In the end it took two months for the engine job to be completed and the car was finally available to be seen. I hastily arranged to see two more cars being offered for sale privately and arranged to take a four day weekend away from work. When asked why I needed time off work I said I was going to England to buy an old car. I got some strange looks at that comment.
So it was off on the great adventure. Four days, three widely dispersed cars and one day to make a decision and take possession before the drive home. Seemed like a reasonable prospect to me at the time. The reality turned out to be much more of an adventure than I expected.
The first car I looked at was a red series 3 owned by a west end London dealer. The owner himself was away and one of his staff was looking after me. He left me to look at the car and went off to deal with a long line of customers. The car was in very rough condition cosmetically. The engine had just been rebuilt and the rear suspension was being repaired but the rest of the car was in very poor condition. As I went down my check list I realized that it would take more money than the car was worth to get it into reasonable condition. I now realized also that this might not be as simple as I originally thought. I wanted to speak to the salesman but by now we were behind several other customers and the salesman was involved with someone on the telephone. It turned out that he was speaking to a friend who had just lost her husband and who was feeling suicidal. Even a used car salesman won't hang up on a friend under those circumstances. So while we waited, my wife struck up conversation with the salesman's father. She learned all kinds of things about the place during that conversation and it all confirmed that we were not going to buy that car. We chalked the whole thing up as a "cultural experience" and took the opportunity to have a look at the range of newer (not acceptable because they must be at least 15 years old) and much more expensive Esprits.
The next day we were off to Bristol to see our first private sale car. It was a white series 3 with blue velour interior. It had been owned virtually since new by the same person who had obviously taken good care if it. He was forced to sell it because he had been recently married and they were thinking about kids. It was not that they needed the money, it was that their garage (which was three blocks from their house) would only hold one car and they needed a larger car. I had already felt the effects of the severe overpopulation in Europe. No forests (just tree farms which they called forests), no wildlife, too many cars, etc., etc., but this example of overcrowding really stunned me. Obviously well-to-do people who could not find a place to park a car! When I was taken to see the car, I was just "gobsmacked". This treasured garage was so small that the car could not be entered while it was inside. The owner reached under the rear bumper and grabbed the frame and pulled the car out of the garage. We then got in and went for a spin. The car ran well and when he stopped in a park I gave it a thorough once over. The only thing my untrained eye could see to criticize was some surface rust on the rear suspension components. The rest of the car looked very nice. I was surprized that I was not invited to drive the car nonetheless I decided that I would buy this car. I had made another appointment to see a series 2 John Players Special Commemorative Edition the next day and decided I would keep that appointment. This allowed me to remain cool and give the owner the chance to lower his price. He didn't and as it turned out he should have - at least if he wanted me to buy his car.
The next day we had a typical British driving experience. Our appointment was for noon in a small village near Market Harborough. We got directions on the phone and looked on our map and estimated 2 hours from our hotel. It took us three and a half hours. At one point I stopped and called to reassure them we were coming we were just late. When we arrived, the car was sitting in the perfect "English setting" and it could have been a promotional photo for Lotus. A small white English stucco cottage with perfect little sand coloured gravel lane in the English countryside. The car was much better looking than the JPS cars I had seen in photos (I didn't yet realized that that is true of all Lotus cars. Why do they all look so much better in the flesh than in photos? The best example of all is the Elise which, in my humble opinion, is one of the world's least photogenic cars, actually looks quite good when seen in 3-D) Anyway, the black Esprit with those really tacky gold accents looked really striking beside the white cottage. I thought this is the natural habitat for a lotus and I wondered how the car would transplant to Canada.
Before we even met the owner, we took a few minutes to glance at the car and it looked really sound. I was now glad I had seen the first Series 3 because I had something to compare to. The car's interior looked great except for some wear on the driver's seat. In fact, the interior was not original but was all leather in "magnolia". (For those who don't know these peculiar British colour terms that means white.) In my opinion it looked great with the black exterior even though it was not the official JPS colour. Marilyn, who until this point wasn't really finding the whole thing all that stimulating, stated "that's a beautiful car!" The white series 3 was no longer looking like such a sure bet.
The owner turned out to be a young (early twenties I guessed) man who was forced to store his car with his parents because there was no place to park it where he lived. Again the overcrowding of Europe hit home. I simply cannot imaging having a two hour drive to go for a drive!!! The "official" reason for selling the car was that his parents were moving and his storage facility would no longer be available. I suspect there was more to it than that and that he was finding the maintenance requirements to be a little scary. One of the selling features about this car was that it had a brand new galvanized chassis. I asked about this and was told that this was necessary because of a fluke accident the previous year. Apparently, one of the brake mounting bolts had come loose and jammed in a bad place between the hub and the wheel. This happened at speed and the wheel stopped suddenly and bent the left front frame beyond repair. There was no contact with roadside hazards so the car was otherwise undamaged. My inspection of the car did not find anything to suggest the story was not true and the chassis was certainly new and galvanized. Since chassis corrosion was one of the most important things to look out for on the series 2 cars, this made me feel this example might not be as big a risk as some others with original chassis.
Marilyn and I went for a coffee to consider what to do after having seen three cars in three days. I decided that the cosmetics of the series 2 were worth the extra technical risk versus the series 3, especially considering the significantly lower asking price. I made a firm offer on the car and a deal was struck. Then we all had a lesson in European banking. Although my bank had assured me they could transfer the money virtually instantly on receiving my fax, they did not explain (or know) that the funds would be transferred to a UK central banking clearing house where it would sit for several days. This lead to some frantic calling by both myself and the vendor. In the end he decided that he would trust me and let me have the car even though he did not have any money. He did have a fax from my bank stating that the funds had been transferred to his account so it wasn't that big a gamble but nonetheless I appreciated his gesture. It took three days for him to get his money and I was quite relieved when he called me to confirm all was well. I had called him as soon as I got home to let him know I was not going to ignore the problem and to confirm that my bank had done the transfer so he knew I was not cutting and running.
The trip home was pretty interesting. After a full working day of banking, we did not get away until late afternoon. This meant we would be circling around London at rush hour in a RHD car renowned for failures and which I had never driven before. My wife was not looking forward to this at all since she would be following in a seriously under powered 87 Celica (in Europe they sold one with a 1600 cc engine). The good news was it would be night soon and the Esprit's tail lights are distinctive enough and large enough that they would be easier to see than most.
The London driving was as bad as we feared. The traffic wasn't really all that bad but the British love of roundabouts just about killed us a few times. The major motorways around London have intersections that are as complicated as any I have ever seen. They are actually multiple roundabouts distributed around, you got it, another roundabout. The idea is that as you leave the motorway there is a sign which shows up to six octopii in a circle. Each arm of each octopus has an arrow and a string of unpronounceable consonants which, I assume, is the name of a destination which only the locals have ever heard of. The signs look like an antisocial teenager threw paint and it splattered across the real sign hidden underneath. Marilyn dubbed the signs "splats". One of the arrows on the splat points to the rest stop at which we are aimed. So all you have to do as you leave the motorway at 100 km/h is look at the splat and read all the strings of consonants, count the number of arrows between where you are and the one you want and then count them off on the ground as you pass each until you get to where you are going. Of course you have to do this while going around the roundabout the wrong way and changing from the inside lane to the outside lane across 8 lanes of bumper to bumper commuters. I am beginning to see why Lotus cars were developed in Britain and not in Canada. Its a survival thing.
We had picked out a town just south of London to spend the night so we could get an early start and a clear run to the ferry the next day. We had to cross a toll bridge and this caused my wife some concern since she was driving a LHD car without a co-pilot to deal with the "ticket-taker". We arranged to stop just before the toll booth and plot strategy. I pulled off at the last rest stop before the toll and we hit the worst splat of the whole trip. I still don't know how we managed to stay together through that one. The idea for dealing with the tollbooth was for me to go first and to pay for both cars. Easy right? Away we go, survive the return trip through the splat and soon arrive at a very busy tollbooth. I select a line and my wife follows. Just as I approach the booth the light above it changes from green to red indicating that it is closing down. I swear and squeeze my way into the next lane over causing lots of frustration in the new line. My wife did not see the light change and proceeds in the original line. I check her lane indicators again and sure enough it is green again. I wonder why anyone lives in London. I am sure Marilyn is not going to appreciate this part of the cultural experience. The Celica does not have electric windows so she must stop at the booth, undo her seat belt and reach across the car and roll down the window. Then she gets a quick lesson in Cockney and fumbles around looking for money in her purse, (remember I was supposed to be paying her toll). To make a long story a little shorter, she ended up back on the motorway without a seat belt on and her windows rolled down on a cold, and miserable English evening.
We did manage to find each other after the toll booth event, and I had learned my lesson about splats and was determined not to stop again until we reached our destination. This was the wrong answer as I learned 90 minutes later when Marilyn emerged from her car frozen and "moderately unhappy" about the lane change I made at the tollbooth. There was more good news. The roadside motel we were planning to use for the night turned out to be full. We drove around the town for a while and found that all others were either full or dark without anyone to service the desk. Now what? Well it is only another 90 minutes to Dover. Yes but it will be 11 PM or later by the time we get there. Will there be any better chance of finding a bed there? I don't know but lets try it anyway.
We got back on the road and had a more or less uneventful drive to Dover. The traffic thinned out dramatically and for the first time I was able to appreciate the driving and study the idiosyncrasies of an Esprit. I was impressed that I had driven this far without any noticeable mechanical problems. I was noticing the awkward position for my right foot which I found I had to cock to the right to avoid applying the brakes. (Marilyn had noticed that my brake lights were flashing off and on randomly on the first leg of the drive.) I also began to appreciate the cornering ability when I changed lanes. Just for fun I changed lanes more and more rapidly. Marilyn noticed the car zipping in and out of the traffic and thought I was trying to lose her. The lack of a heater and a radio were also becoming a bit of a drag at this point. It was cold and the drone of Esprit engine noise is a bit tiresome after several hours when there isn't something to distract your ear from time to time.
So we arrived in Dover and our luck turned. We not only found a hotel right on the main drag, but it was cheap (in a European kind of way) and had room for us. It wasn't exactly luxurious but it had a shower in the room and with the blinds closed the flashing neon sign outside the window was not too distracting. The really important attribute was that not only did it have parking for two vehicles (not necessarily certain in Europe) but the parking was secured behind a nice heavy locked gate!
The next morning had a few glitches for us. We did not have reservations for the ferry and so we drove to the terminal to get tickets. It was a zoo. We waited for 10 minutes for the tiny little parking lot to yield two parking spaces so we could go inside. Inside was just as bad. After learning that the next boat was full and that the next available sailing was 2 hours later, we bought our tickets and went outside to find ourselves double parked. It took those crooks 40 minutes to do their business and return and they were not very popular with the oweners of the many blocked cars. Another reminder of the too-many-people-not-enough-geography situation in Britain. Then I stalled the car a few times and had great difficulty wiggling it around the millions of cars all scrambling to either leave or arrive in my corner of Dover. I was beginning to realize just how wide this car was compared to almost anything else I had ever driven. We finally escaped and went back to our hotel parking lot and went for a nice walk before the ferry ride.
Getting on the ferry was a treat. The Dover to Calais ferry system is one of the busiest anywhere and the boats are very large. The boats are configured with three lanes on each side and several levels high. The loading technique is to load the left hand lane on each side first then the right hand lane second and the middle lane last. Yup you got it first try. As I was driving up the ramp, a ferry boat employee directed me to stop while they decided if the right lane was full or not. I had a quick look at what I would be faced with if it was deemed time to fill the middle lane. European cars are all much smaller than the average Canadian machine - except a Lotus Esprit. The lanes on the ferry are designed to squeeze the maximum number of small cars on and naturally, the drivers filling the left and right lanes like to cheat towards the middle lane to give them room to open their doors on the outside. This means that the middle lane is exactly half as wide as an Esprit. I changed my mind, I want to take the chunnel. Too late, I am directed to drive the entire length of the ferry in half a lane with doors and people appearing suddenly in front of me every second or so. This was the part of the trip Marilyn liked the most. She got to follow along behind just imagining my happy disposition as I drove the 15 or so miles it takes to reach the front of the boat. As it turns out, I made it. I would not have done so though if a Lotus were not as low as it is. I was literally driving with my rear view mirrors passing under those of cars on both sides at the same time!
The ferry ride was uneventful except that Marilyn was beginning to gather some distressing evidence about the "performance" of my car. She took the opportunity to brief me during lunch on the ferry. It appears that her early conclusion is that although she knows I bought the car to get the attention of 20-something women, she was seeing a consistent pattern of overwhelming attention only from pre-pubescent males. Had I wasted my money totally???
To paraphrase the Lotus servicing manual: to unload the ferry simply reverse the loading procedure. So I sat for what seemed like forever while every British subject in captivity drove past my car missing it by millimeters on both sides. Miraculously, the ordeal ended and I escaped without any new dings or scratches. The five-hour drive home now seemed like a piece of cake. We had decided we would spend our few remaining French francs on fuel at a rest stop we often used before we entered Belgium. We stopped and Marilyn filled her car and I looked at the amount and realized we only had 5 francs more than that. No problem we were nearly to Belgium and my tanks were still more than half full. So off we go again with a southern Belgium rest stop as our goal.
The rest stop is at the base of the Ardennes and I could feel the temperature dropping as we went. After the pit stop I noticed the choke light illuminated on the dash. I checked the choke was home but it would not go out. By now Marilyn had disappeared up the road since the next stop was home in Luxembourg and she did not need to follow me any more. So off I went in her wake while still puzzled by the light. After 10 miles I looked at the light again and realized it says choke/fuel! Duh!!
In retrospect it makes perfect sense that I would figure this out after leaving the last fuel stop for about 70 kms. No problem though, I would be able to conserve fuel for the rest of the trip by driving nice and slow. This was not by choice of course, it had begun to snow as we rose into the Ardennes and the road got worse and worse as we went. I was pretty sure that Lotus Esprits were not the car to drive on ice covered roads for all the same reasons why it is the perfect car to drive on dry ones. This was the time for the car temperature to start creeping up from 90 to nearly 100 C just to make the experience complete. I made it (just) to a fuel station and used my last little bit of Belgian cash to put 10 liters of fuel in the car. I also made it home in the snow without any heater and therefore no defrosting. Marilyn was wondering what had happened to me but since she didn't know what else to do she was forced to wait at home for me to call from the hospital she suspected I would be at by now.
Well it was a true cultural experience. I learned a lot about Europe and Britain from the episode. We learned things impossible to learn by taking the usual tours of Buckingham Palace and Stonehenge. My marriage survived the ordeal (barely) and I know that the choke light has a dual use on an Esprit. Would I do it again? Maybe, but Marilyn has a clear opinion about going with me next time (i.e. "when hell freezes over"). The bottom line is this approach did net me a decent car that has given me little trouble (so far) and saved me lots of money as compared to shopping for a Lotus in Canada.