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Lotuses

Lotus Cars are built in Hethel, England, which is close to Norwich and north-east of London. Lotus was founded by Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman and 1947 is often given as the founding year.

While there is a wide range of cars that have been made including many pure-race-cars I will just mention the ones of particular relevance to me. Lotus is selling cars today in Europe and the USA. The production is very limited. For more on current US road-legal cars contact Lotus Cars USA to find your local US dealer. There are also very exciting track cars for sale (not road legal).

Some pages referred to below have lots of photos, so may be slow-to-load if you have a slow internet connection.

My first Lotus was a Europa Twin Cam. I purchased it in 1982 in Foster City, CA and drove it till 1991. I took it apart in 1991 and restored it to road and track use in 2005. (The original Europa page is now just a placeholder.) There is a fantastic tool available to Europa owners, Jerry Johnson's Europa Knowledgebase .

I purchased a 1979 Lotus Esprit S2 in 1988,sold in 2004. My wife wishes we still had it, it was so comfortable for car trips.

I purchased a 1966 Lotus Elan in October 2004, a car with a special history.

The stock Twin Cam oil pan (as on Elan and Europa) is fine for road use, but on the track it leads to oil starvation in right hand turns. Not good. Indeed I did wind up with oil starvation in the center main on my Elan which lead to an expensive engine rebuild. So I've put together some (unreliable) notes on my oil pan design.

Some pictures of my cars at trackdays and of GGLC events are here.

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