Hi everyone,
Now I know this isn’t HiFi news but as I have said before a lot of our customers are petrolheads so just wanted to share this story as it is pretty cool, well to me anyway.
So I have been very lucky over the last 8+ years when it comes to Motorsport, I’ve raced a Radical for 3 years, then went on to race a Cup 250 Elise in the Elise Trophy, drove up the hill in a Jeff Gordon Nascar at the Festival of Speed, twice, and more recently I’ve been fortunate to race a stunning Lotus Formula Junior which I absolutely love driving, but there has always been one big bucket list adventure that I would love to tick off but it is such a big one it is more of a pipe dream in reality but it doesn’t hurt to dream does it.
That dream? To race a Lotus Eleven at the LeMans Classic, Why? Well for me the Lotus Eleven is the prettiest car ever designed by man and LeMans is the greatest race track on the planet as far as I am concerned so why not put the 2 things together, well it makes perfect sense to me.
But just recently I had begun to loose hope this would ever be even the slightest possibility as for one I am getting older so need to get a move on but a bigger issue is that over the last couple of years Lotus Elevens have sky rocketed in value so I had kinda given up on it ever happening.
Then as these things often happen just when you give up, something positive comes out of the blue and I was sent a message from a friend that an Eleven had just hit the market at a reasonably sensible price, initially I didn’t take any notice as I knew I couldn’t afford it but then it started eat away at me as I knew if I didn’t at least look into this one then I may as well give up on the dream as it did feel like this was the one opportunity that needed exploring.
So to cut a long story short I ended up putting a deposit down on it to buy me some time whilst I tried to figure out how to afford it, I couldn’t remortgage our house as I’d already done that for another car, which Wendy reminds me about all the time, the only option really was to finance it somehow or to sell a few organs, so a few phone calls later I had a finance agreement in place to make it doable so next I needed to drive up to Liverpool to take a look at the car, not that I know what I’m looking at to be honest.
Anyway, needless to say it was love at first sight and the deal was done after 5 minutes of seeing the car, it really couldn’t have been a better example as it is the full monty, the ultimate spec of Eleven, a 1956 LeMans 1500cc MK1 Lotus Eleven, this car was a real giant killer back in its time, mad to think that Lotus were only 8 years old when this was built, not they are in their 77th year.
So there we have it, we now own a Lotus Eleven, every time I see it I actually can’t believe it, I find myself just staring at it, she’s so pretty, to be honest it is almost too beautiful to race but I can’t think like that as it is a race car after all so we have booked to shake it down at Silverstone on August 15th to see what we have actually bought, it has been restored and it does appear to run well so hopefully it is a good one.
So it is 2 years to the next LeMans Classic, anyone know what I need to do now to get this Eleven on the grid?
I will post the odd update but hopefully it will be an interesting couple of years ahead but for now please find a few pics of this stunning Eleven.
All the best,
Paul.
