Story and photos by Bill Holland
Before we had Hollywood’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and its various remakes and reboots, we had what many consider to be Colin Chapman’s defining achievement, the Lotus Eleven–manufactured from 1956 through 1958.
Chapman essentially created the Eleven from scratch; it featured a lightweight tubular steel spaceframe with aluminum supports that weighed only 70 pounds. Chapman is …
One of my all time favourite cars. I was lucky enought to befriend Merv Therriault who worked for Lotus in the 50's, and when they were moving drawing offices Colin told the staff to get rid of a bunch of old drawings. Merv got rid of them by taking them home with him. He ended up with most of the drawings for the Eleven S1 club and a body section drawing for the Series 2 (unfortunately it was only the lines from the firewall back). He was a customer of the shop I was working at, and when he heard I was into building and restoring Lotus he graciously lent them to me to build a replica. The car oringally was going to have an A series motor, but a Climax firepump was sourced and it was rebuilt as a street motor (still in pump size, 1020cc).
Here's a picture that Merv took behind the Lotus works, the chassis appears to be a Series 2 done up for an auto show.
And here's Merv and I with my replica after getting it back from the local metal shop:
In a slightly related topic (and was posted on a Lotus FB page today), Merv was part of the "Lotus 12 Road test" that took part on Christmas day. Dennis Jenkinson wanted to road test a grand prix car and Chapman obliged lending him a 12 on Christmas day... Lotus 12 Road Test
Don’t forget the Lotus Valiant, That was powered by a 170 cube Hyper-Pak equipped Slant-Six (backed by a 4-speed). The engine block was used as a stressed member of the suspension.
https://www.valiant.org/lotus.html
https://www.lotuseleven.org/DarkAges1/open_exhaust.htm
https://wwwbollyblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/lotus-valiant-beven-has-knack-for.html?m=1
https://www.lotuseleven.org/DarkAges1/LVnotes.htm
In reply to Jakespeed :
Would make for a good story!
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