1974 Lotus Twin Cam

Description

Car has an interesting history. Gel coat colors do not match perfectly. The fenders (wings) are early production and the bonnet is late production which explains the different gel coats. The reason things are mixed up is because this S4 Seven is the very last one sent to the US at the end of production. I have a letter from 1975 from the importer to the first owner explaining why it has such an odd serial number. It was a kit, meaning it was a complete car in crates that was assembled by the importer and they used a VIN that Michigan required for kit-built cars. The importer was SCU Industries in Livonia Michigan who operated as Lotus Central, Sports Cars Unlimited and Lotus Canada at the time. I think this crate of parts came in thru Canada which would explain the metric speedometer. The VIN number says it is a 1974 model built 12-12-73. There is a VIN plate on the firewall that says the same thing as the VIN itself. Also, I think that by the end of 1973 Lotus was digging through piles of parts they had in order to unload as many Seven kits as possible. This was the same period when Chapman was selling the Seven off to Caterham. This is not a Caterham S4, as Caterham made design changes before producing their first S4 Seven and this car has none of those changes. The engine is a big valve weber head. Carbs are dellortos, transmission is close-ratio variant used in the Elan (Cortina I think), differential is live-axle Ford Escort redesigned by Lotus for the twin cam with stronger axles. I do not have the original steering wheel or road wheel as mine are the same as Caterham used. I have the original AC air breather. Front coils, shocks are Dave Bean Engineering. The car has been properly maintained, only driven 1,350 miles the last 10 years. Car has always been in the dry under a car cover. I have never seen any rust anywhere on this car. I have original wings (fenders), orginal top, side windows, tonneau, boot cover, several repair manuals and related books and articles and box full of small parts. This car has a clean Oklahoma title and is street legal. How it got into this country with the weber head and inability to measure up to all the pollution and safety laws at the time is another story with some conjecture. I have documentation which explains a lot of the history of this car, and as I said, it is interesting. It is a fact that Chapman would do anything and everything to finance Team Lotus including mixing mismatched gel coat colors and fiberglass with gel coat defects in those last S4 kits. The previous owner had the car at a car show on the east coast when a man who was a Lotus employee when this car was crated came along, stopped to look at the car and commented "so you got one of those" and then proceeded to tell him the story This is an honest, strong and well maintained Seven with all the girling and lucas (prince of darkness) in working order. This type 60 has Chapman all over it and illustrates in so many ways, especially chassis road performance, the genius of the man. I'm going to stop here before I talk myself out of doing this.