{"id":9283,"date":"2019-05-23T08:03:50","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T06:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internationalclassic.com\/?p=9283\/"},"modified":"2019-05-23T17:54:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T15:54:13","slug":"tale-of-three-lotuses-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/internationalclassic.com\/en\/tale-of-three-lotuses-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"The tale of three Lotuses \u2013 Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Lotus 26R<\/h4>\n

I have written about my involvement with some Lotus cars namely a series 2 Eleven and a Series 2 lotus 15. Both these were designed as pure racing cars but Lotus was also well known for their GT cars.<\/p>\n

I decided to buy one of these and try a different type of racing. Colin Chapman designed a winning GT car when he penned the beautiful Lotus Elite, but the car I was interested in was the next in line the fabulous Lotus Elan which was powered by the Lotus Ford Twin Cam engine. These 1600cc units were massaged to outputs of 120HP which made the lightweight Elan go like a rocket.<\/p>\n

Lotus also made a limited series of special Elans just for the competition called the 26R. I wanted one of these. I didn\u2019t have to wait very long before I found one for sale in the North of the UK that was being offered on behalf of its owner by Tony Steele a well-known racer. He had raced the car for its owner for the last 2 seasons scoring 5 wins. This was exactly the car I was looking for. I gave Tony a call and made an appointment to go and have a look at it.<\/p>\n

After a 5 hour drive, I arrived in Lancashire at Tony\u2019s house. He took me to his garage to see the car. It was just what I was looking for. In fact, it was a really famous car called the Gold Bug that had been part of the Ian Walker racing team. The Lotus factory never entered an official team but passed this on to Ian Walker so in effect he was the Lotus works team.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”WE ALL HAVE A STORY, TELL US YOURS!” style=”outline-custom” outline_custom_color=”#990000″ outline_custom_hover_background=”#fce523″ outline_custom_hover_text=”#000000″ shape=”square” size=”lg” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost:10372%2Fracconta-la-tua-storia%2F||target:%20_blank|”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Lotus 26R was a really special car and although it looked like the road car all its parts were special from the very light fiberglass body to the adjustable suspensions and the magnesium knock-off wheels. The interior was really spartan with only the bare essentials. Everything including the seats was made from lightweight fiberglass I asked Tony if I could take a week to think it over and then give him a response. He agreed and I set off back to London.<\/p>\n

A week later after careful thought, I decided to go ahead so I called him and closed the deal. My idea was to send the car back to California, do a few races and sell it. I liked the idea of being the first to offer such a car. Lotus 26Rs hadn\u2019t been seen racing for some time so the chance to sell it for a good profit looked promising.<\/p>\n

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