So my cell phone went “Ding” one day, telling me that someone sent me a Facebook text. Usually that is my brother, sending me a picture of some fabulous meal he is having in Barcelona or maybe a picture of his feet at the top of some huge mountain. But this time it was a Facebook friend that I hardly knew. Bill dinged me to tell me he had answered a craigslist ad in the Detroit area for some early Capri parts. While chatting with the owner of the Capri parts, he found that the owner had a bunch of interesting cars. One of them was a 1965 Lotus Elan S2. He had bought the car in 1968 from a friend. The car had melted the red plastic clutch line (typical) which had caused a little fire which burned up the wiring harness. He got it real cheap ($400) but never got around to fixing it. Yes, that car with 21,000 miles had been sitting since 1968. The guy was trying to clear out his garages and driveways so he and his wife could move to a condo in Florida. They had bought the condo a year ago and still hadn’t put their house up on the market, so apparently they were procrastinators.
I got a couple pictures sent to me and Bill gave me the contact info for Sam the owner. I gave Sam a call. The car was of course very tired. Stored outside for some time, they had used some good tarps on the car so it wasn’t real bad. But critters had eaten most of the interior and it was unclear what the chassis would be like. I talked at length with Sam and found out that he was planning on placing the car on Bring A Trailer. I told him that was a very reputable site and that he would most likely get the most money for the car there. But after another half hour of schmoozing, I told him about myself and the cars that I restored. I sent him a link to the gallery on Lotuscorps.org and asked him to take a look at some of the projects I had restored. I made him a reasonable offer for the car, told him I could pick it up in a week and that he could track the progress of the restoration on our website. I was honest and told him he would most likely make more money on BAT, but that it would be some effort involved to take the pictures, post the ad, answer the questions and then deal with someone else wanting him to ship the car. My deal was cash & carry. All done next week. The next day I got an email back from him saying – Deal!
One of the good guys that I used to work with had just built a new home on a channel to Lake St. Clair which is only 40 minutes from West Bloomfield where the project was. So Sue and I made plans to travel out on a Monday, pack the car on the trailer and then spend the evening with my friend Tim and his friend Kevin. Tim and Kevin were car guys. They came out maybe 15 years ago to one of the Wisconsin fall tours that we liked to participate in. They had a lot of fun and I got to test drive the brand new at the time Porsche Cayenne. Kevin was an automotive writer at the time and got to test drive a lot of cool cars.
So Sue and I hooked up my trusty, rusty trailer and headed out Detroit way. No problems there. As we parked outside the address of Sam’s house, I could see a long driveway with about 6 cars parked along the side, all with tarps on them. As we approached Sam and Sally, I could see a 2½ car attached garage with a couple cars inside up on jack stands. There was also a pretty big 4 car detached garage in the back.
A very friendly and very talkative couple, we chatted about this car project under a tarp and that car project under a tarp. A Porsche 944 Turbo that hasn’t run in years but only needs a clutch. An Audi 5000 that hasn’t run in years but only needs a little emissions valve. Some sort of 500 HP Audi that just needs a kneuton valve. A Mercedes that they can’t unlock. A Formula Super Vee that ran fine when parked after Sam’s last race… in 1981! All of these projects that just needed a little something, but it seemed as though that over the years they just never got around to fixing anything. They just got more cars. It was quite something. Sally mentioned that they had just recently traded an old boat (nonrunning) and a Miata (non-running) for someone to come in and fix up their basement. Wow. Now nothing was really a mess and stuff was not really piled up. There was no garbage. Everything was clean so they weren’t really hoarders in the way I have seen before. Maybe just organized and very clean hoarders?
We walked around to that back of the big garage. There were double doors on both ends and the back opened up into a huge yard. Maybe an acre in itself. With a pretend drum roll we pulled the tarp off the Elan and there it was. Not too bad. Other than the seats being all torn up and everything very tired and crusty it was not too bad. The interior was dry, which was a relief. The body was very straight and everything seemed to be all there and all in salvageable condition. Engine very crusty. Carbs were in a box in the garage along with a nice spare set of Lotus Cortina Tach/speedo gauges. In nice condition! He said he hadn’t been able to get the trunk open in years. I gave it a shot but I think it was just
the wrong key so I said I would get it open when I got back home.
I brought the trailer around the back and we started to figure out how to move the car with 4 very flat tires off the sunken and broken patio blocks and onto the trailer. I had brought a spare set of wheels with tires. Even though the tires on the car were brand new, they were brand new in 1968! All flat on the bottom and none would hold air. I popped off one hubcap and wheel at a time, put a spare tire/wheel on the car and with a generous amount of grunting while rotating the tire, I got each brake caliper to break free. Wow! So in about 30 minutes we had the car rolling and we pushed it right up the ramps and onto my trailer. Easy peasy. We tied everything down, packed up the few boxes and all the wheels into the Venza. I had brought along a used convertible top and fitted that to the car so when it would start to rain later, the insides would stay relatively dry. Relatively because even a new Elan top only keeps about 95% of the rain water out. I wrote Sam the check and he signed the title and off Sue and I went.
We headed over to my friend’s house. As we were approaching some heavy traffic I noticed some movement out of my left eye. A big daddy long-legs spider had just hopped off my side window and was walking upside down on my sun visor. I summoned my fearless spouse who dispatched the trespassing penalty with great aplomb – splat!
Tim has a beautiful new house that he designed and had built on a man-made channel leading to Lake St. Clair. The home looks like a magazine for Ikea… and Disneyland. Very nicely decorated. They had the upstairs made into a separate guest house with a bed, kitchen and bath. Very nice. We spent some time out on the patio overlooking the channel and catching up on old times. Dinner down the road was very nice. Lot’s of good conversation and a laughs.
The next morning I could hear the garage door open as our hosts left early to go to work. Sue and I packed up, cleaned up (this ain’t no Motel 6) and headed back home. Thanks Tim & Kevin!
Back home the next day I worked on getting the trunk open. I tried all of my keys but nothing got the tumblers to tumble right so I resorted to my Snap-on screwdriver with a wrench for turning. I could feel the brass keys succumbing to my twisting and snapping off from the force of the Snap-on. The lock was open. As I opened the trunk lid I was reminded of a cheesy Saturday night Svengoolie movie where a coffin with a mummy in it would creak as it opened. Luckily no hand came out as the trunk lid was raised to it’s upright position for the first time in 50 years! I visually and physically approached cautiously. Although I knew nothing could be alive in there I was not sure what kind of dead stuff I would find. Well, nothing recognizable at least. Where the wood floor had been was just a level of rotted wood and muck. The whole bottom of the trunk was level from one side to the other with muck. There were the remains of a Lotus Elan service manual, but only the vinyl outer coating. The paper pages had been eaten decades ago and the rings for the binder were rusted away. There was supposed to be a new wiring harness in a bag in the trunk. Well I found out what happens to plastic after 50 years. It decomposes. Yuck. Well, here we go again. I got out my shop vac and the real long-nosed pliers and a garbage can. At least the gas tank was not full of old water and old gas and odd parts like the Cape Cod car had been. Still, both the gas tank and spare tire went right into the garbage. Underneath the gas tank I found many of the original tools that came with the car. Very rusty but still nice to have when doing a proper restoration.
So is this it? Am I done picking up Elan projects? I think so, and as of this writing I have no more “possibilities” on the horizon. Now I just have to start getting an assembly line going like in Hethel England and get busy!
