Interesting lend

[Nefarious]

For convenience, I borrowed a friend's car for the afternoon last week.

Feels very cool, but the driving experience was quite....errr...period



(it's the white one in this photo)

[mik]

Very

But yeah - with older cars i hope to enjoy the experience more than the drive.

[Nefarious]

This is the one we restored a couple of summers ago. At the time, my friend and I disagreed over whether to modernise any aspects of the car, but he wanted to keep everything rigorously authentic (down to tyres supposed to recreate the feel of crossplies!). Personally, I would have at least given it semi-modern brakes and decent dampers, but it's his car and it's the way he likes it.

If this really is the authentic experience, it's funny to think of it as being the epitome of performance in the 60s. You could get a ton out of it, but you'd probably need new trousers afterwards.

[240PP]

Had the same when I borrowed a mate's MGC for half an hour one sunny day. A nice sound from the straight six and a nostalgic stench of petrol but the handling and brakes were frankly terrifying. I was more than happy to hand it back and get in my Z4 for the drive home.

Modern cars FTW.

[Nefarious]

Funnily enough, the same chap also owns the 73 Europa I've mentioned on here before (black one in this pic)


It's only 4 years younger than the Elan, but a completely different animal. It's "period modded" with an integral cage, engine upgrade to 155bhp, bigger brakes (from something available in the 70s), bigger ARBs, decent adjustable dampers etc etc. OK, it doesn't feel "modern", but it'd happily outrun a standard S1 Elise and feel completely safe and stable doing it.

[scotta]

I want a shot in his S2 for comparison sakes.

[Nefarious]

I fear you'd be disappointed. It's maybe a smidge quicker than yours in a straight line (but only a smidge). Power delivery is spikier and it generally feels less exciting. IMHO, of course.

[PaulJ]

I'm old enough to have the advantage of being able to bring into focus an image of Emma Peel in her Elan to make all well in the world again...

I've also owned a '60s Elan and a '70s Europa, and the gear-change quality advantage would swing it in favour of the Elan for me.

[Nefarious]

I've also owned a '60s Elan and a '70s Europa, and the gear-change quality advantage would swing it in favour of the Elan for me.

Europa gearchange is completely fixable (I've done 3 now!) - it's just a pain in the arse because the long and convoluted linkage develops play everywhere. The biggest single source is the bearing at the bottom of the stick itself (which isn't even a proper bearing as standard). There is an American company that sells as CNC'd housing to take a standard plain spherical that improves the feel no end. The rest is just going through the joints in the linkage and replacing them with proper rod end bearings. Finally, the "tree" in the middle always has a little play due to bad machining, so needs removal and careful grinding to get the mating faces completely square to one another. Both the black and the green ones in the above picture now have proper "rifle bolt" changes that I'm particularly proud of

[PaulJ]

I've also owned a '60s Elan and a '70s Europa, and the gear-change quality advantage would swing it in favour of the Elan for me.

Europa gearchange is completely fixable (I've done 3 now!) - it's just a pain in the arse because the long and convoluted linkage develops play everywhere. The biggest single source is the bearing at the bottom of the stick itself (which isn't even a proper bearing as standard). There is an American company that sells as CNC'd housing to take a standard plain spherical that improves the feel no end. The rest is just going through the joints in the linkage and replacing them with proper rod end bearings. Finally, the "tree" in the middle always has a little play due to bad machining, so needs removal and careful grinding to get the mating faces completely square to one another. Both the black and the green ones in the above picture now have proper "rifle bolt" changes that I'm particularly proud of

I wish someone like you had been a development engineer at Lotus before my Europa had been built.

[Nefarious]

I wish someone like you had been a development engineer at Lotus before my Europa had been built.

Why, thank you
I never thought of myself as particularly OCD, but I do find myself spending quite a lot of time getting the touch and feel aspects of these cars just right. It does help having a shed full of racecar bits next door, so things can just be engineered properly!

[Sundayjumper]

Slightly going OT, one of the guys today had a new-style Europa. I don’t think I’d ever seen one before. Looked really good.