Many of you recall that I wrote a series of articles from 1990-1997 when I took two very tired Lotus Cortina junkyard dogs and made one pretty nice one out of them. That car is gone, sold to a collector in Greece. Since then I finished up a Series 3 Elan restoration that was started by the late Al Kupferschmidt. Sold that to a young lady in Chicago who is an Avengers/Emma Peel fan. I fixed up and sold a right hand drive S3 Elan that I was the high ebay bidder (literally) one night after having a few too many beers at a Lotus Corps meeting. I sold that car to a Japanese fellow in Detroit who is going to take the car hack home with him in Japan. I rebuilt a Lotus Seven America from a pile of shrapnel brought up from the Florida Keys. That one is up for sale right now. Oh, and I'm still working on a nice Series two Elan up at our lake house. That project is about 1/4 done. Throughout all those projects since the Cortina, I did not spend any time at the keyboard keeping track of the fun and frivolity that takes place behind the scenes of a restoration. I think I'm going to try this writing thing again and I hope you like the toilet humor I try to inject into these semi-technical articles as you sit in your "library" reading your Lotus Notus.
I was standing at the cross roads in my garage. The Seven was done. The project Elan was up North at the lake house, so I had no real project car to work on in my Des Plaines garage. Every car I owned had 2 coats of wax on them. The lawn looked pretty good and my wife Sue was getting tired of me walking into the house and hugging her. "You need another project" she yelped at me as she slapped my hands away from her as she folded the laundry one day. Well you don't have to tell me twice! Not that I'm going to give up perfecting sexual harassment in the home, but I will take her up on the advice to get another project car. I had been keeping an eye on ebay and had scrounged around all the usual web sites looking for another Elan project or maybe an old Elite. I wasn't coming up with anything reasonable. There was a wrecked Elan in Milwaukee and a toasted one in Pennsylvania, but they wanted way too much money for those. Paul Quiniff was willing to sell me the S2 Europa I had sold to him many years ago, but that was way too modified for what I like to do - restore them to stock or better than stock condition. Europa projects are very easy to find, but only the late model Twin Cam Specials are worth anything, even fully restored.
One of Rich Cwik's famous claims is that over the years he has owned 2% of the total Europa production. That's a lot of fiberglass even if the 10 year production numbers are less than what GM puts out in a week. Rich's current Europa stock included a pure racecar (with one of the best Greg Wisniewski paint jobs you ever saw - inspired by just the right mix of Olympia beer and shots of Southern Comfort); an S2 Renault powered car and a very late model Twin Cam Special with the 5-speed. I was familiar with all three. The Twin Cam was the only one to move under it's own power in the last 20 years. The Twin Cam car Rich bought in 1996 and had a horrid florescent green paint job put on it. The green was kind of like a British Racing Green, but it had this additive put in the paint so that it actually glowed in the dark. Rich hauled it out to the Lotus Owners Gathering (LOG) in Ohio and had won the dubious award of the "Europa most needing a new dashboard". As a prize, Rich was handed brand new wood dashboard only hours after he had purchased a new one at the LOG auto-jumble. Since the LOG, Rich had neglected the car and it was in storage, literally up on a shelf in Jack Buchinger's garage/house (more on that later).
So Rich and I agreed on a price and one Friday afternoon I picked him up in Sue's Audi with my trusty rusty trailer bouncing along, and we headed out to Jack's in Princeton llinois. When Jack retired from Illinois Bell/Ameritech/SBC, he decided to move out to the boonies, so it took us several hours to get to Jack's place. Rich brought along his cute little pug dog Winston. Winston spent the first hour on Rich's lap snorting up boogars and slobbering all over the passenger window. He finally settled down and went to sleep at Rich's feet. When the car door opened upon arrival at Jack's place. Winston took off running. His sniffer was going crazy taking in all the smells of the farmland. He followed his nose down the road for a few minutes visiting every tree he spotted (or is that spotting every tree he visited?). He then noticed he was way far away from us, got scared and came scampering back.
Now Jack's house is basically a BIG pole barn. He always wanted a garage that was actually TOO big, if that's possible. So when he started making his dream house in the country, he started out by making his dream garage. The barn appears to he about 100' X 40'. Jack sectioned off about 40' and made that part into his house. It has a big living room, kitchen, bedrooms and bath. It's an extreme garage with an attached house. As you come in the main door, off to the left is a reproduction model of Rich's old shop. It comes complete with back to back shelving units filled up to the 18' ceiling with ton's of "Stuff". Not to he confused of course with what most wives would call junk. As Rich defines it. "Stuff is the Junk that you need and Junk is the Stuff you need to get rid of" - or something like that. So when Rich had to close down his shop. Jack had this big empty garage that Rich just kept bringing truckload after trailer load after van load of "Stuff", until it was packed quite full. Packed just like Rich's old shop. The middle part of Jack's building is Jack's actual garage where he has essentials such as the hydraulic lift and a huge electric forklift. He also has a wall-o-cars. Actually, they are mostly Rich's cars. Jack has his new Nissan 350-Z on the lift and his old Nissan tube-frame road racer on the lower shelf and then there's Rich's 3 Europas. Soon to be only 2, at least here. Rich has other storage that no one else alive has ever seen. Supposed to be a couple more cars there including a Seven.
After a quick tour of the shop, we spent about 45 minutes moving Jack's stuff (not junk) around so we could maneuver the forklift over to the shelf to bring down the Europa. We managed to get it down without dropping it on Winston and rolled it out onto my waiting trailer. Pretty dirty but apparently complete. Rich tossed in a couple new items like a dashboard, stainless steel door hinges, a header, a different intake manifold and a New Old Stock carpet set. Our stomachs were growling (yes it was a very loud chorus) so we headed into town for a Friday Night Fish Fry. The buzzing metropolis of downtown Princeton was just down the road a piece. Actually. it's a fairly big town now because they recently got their own McDonalds AND a Wal-Mart! Winston stayed in the Audi as we parked next door to the restaurant at the Tractor and Trailer store. I had to leave the doors unlocked as Winston was setting off the inside motion detector alarm on the Audi. Jack said not to worry. there was no crime in Princeton and nobody was going to steal Winston. The Friday Fish Fry was a gathering of all the farmers and workers throughout the area. Jack talked to some folks he knew as the farmers flirted with the waitresses. Pretty good fish at a real cheap price.
The ride home was a bit challenging as it was raining pretty good and there was a good wind going. At least some of the dirt got rinsed off the Europa. I made it home by midnight and just backed the whole thing into the yard to be unloaded the next day.
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 2
