Jalopnik 
Enter your username and password.
Detroit, 12:34 AM
Wed Dec 2
30 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Ray Wert | | AIM
Road Test Editor:
Wes Siler |
Weekend Editor:
Murilee Martin |
Associate Editor - Houston:
Associate Editor - Detroit:
Editor-at-Large:
Contributors:
John Krewson |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
03/08/09
03/08/09
03/08/09
We call it "The Lotus Position".
03/08/09
Q: I have a 1976 Lotus Elite that I use as an incidental "Daily Driver" so I'm interested the cars you've got advertised on ebay as "parts cars", but I'm a little concerned that it appears as though the two cars have kind of been "picked over" (missing windows, etc.) and would like you to tell me about the general condition of their interiors... do you have any pictures you could send me? Doug Jackson (in Seattle)
A: The yellow 1976 is complete-nothing missing-I dont think they are parts cars-the yellow one needs restoration because one of the back quarter windows broke and water etc got in.I can check it this morning and tell you if anything is missing-I parked it complete.The white one was in the process of restoration and the parts are all in bags-the interior is brand new in plastic bags-only one seat remained in the car and needs recovering.ill get more pictures today.
03/08/09
I can't say I'd give my love to the Eclats.
Clearly, they are the bigger hell.
But your crazy Uncle Ferry demands that you buy the 911.
Yes. WIDEBODY 911.
The Porsche Club will always hate you and look down on you, and you know what? Factory Genuine parts are for pansies.
You were quite embittered when the Porsche Club of America sent you away when you'd bought that 924 Turbo and told you to "come back when you have a REAL Porsche". Your blood boiled.
You longed for nothing more than to strike back. And you've always loved the shape of the 911-- All Porsches, really. And that's why you bought this basketcase of a 911.
No motor? All the better.
You casually buy yourself the turbo V8 from a rolled Cayenne Turbo S, and buy yourself a fiberglass widebody kit with urethane front splitter.
You can see the Porsche Nazis gagging in despair already. A watercooled engine in a 71? Oh yes-- and a V8 no less. You could have gone SBC V8, but it just felt too cheap. You really needed to slap the Porsche club bastards in the face. You know how they LOATHE the Cayenne yet are forced to love it because the wife wanted one.
Since you didn't have a set of front fenders to worry about in the first place, you can get any fenders you damn well please-- and into which you can install any lights you want. That said, you buy a set of projector headlights from a 995 911, into which you install non-genuine 4300K HID bulbs. Oh, but they're not period correct, they'll moan. You sell the stock wheels in favor of a set of Fikse FM10 deep-dish sport wheels. Non-OEM wheels?! Springs? Bilstein. Shocks? H&R. Brakes? Brembo.
As you take the car out for the first time, you realize that though the Turbo V8 packs way more punch than this car was meant to cope with, it needs MOAR POWER.
So you turn up the boost and find that 600hp feels just about right.
A few short months after you dragged that sad carcass of a 911 home, you've really got a fire breathing monster on your hands. The rear bonnet hangs open crazily like a Fiat 500 Abarth, the radiator and intercooler both vying for space on the rear of the car. You eschew the factory Porsche taillights in favor of a set of LED trailer lights, just to spite the Porsche Nazis. Now that your cobbled together FrankenPorsche has come together, you realize that the best paint job to finish it off would in fact, be NO PAINT at all.
And now, your friend, whose father runs the local PCA, has tipped you off to the fact that they will be running a PRIVATE autocross this weekend. Oh, they will fucking get some.
You fire up your yellow, white and grey Porsche, giddily prodding the Cayenne's Turbo V8. You grin because you know precisely how insane this thing is. The added weight of the V8 has further upset the Porsche's already iffy weight balance, prompting you to fill the underhood bonnet with some ballast weights, just to make sure there's some hope of keeping the car's front wheels planted.
You roar onto the street, the Cayenne's Turbo V8 running basically openheader after the turbocharger, spewing fire and unburnt fuel in a nasty cloud behind you.
As you release the heavy clutch, the rear tires dig in and the whole thing squats, the torque of the turbocharged V8 attempting to pull the front wheels off the ground. You lay down a thick set of rubber 11s as you leave your street. You come up on the lot of Irwindale Speedway, the private lot the Porsche club has rented out for their little party. Luckily for you, security is basically nonexistent.
You roar onto the lot, the V8 growling angrily as you come up to the line to run the course. Your monster belches thick, sooty onto the shiny paint of the cars behind it.
The prim and proper PCA officials are practically dying of disgust and dismay-- they are horrified at your NON-GENUINE Porsche, every detail on the car absolutely horrifies them. The lack of paint, the fiberglass body, the CAYENNE V8. They nearly keel over. Yet, you still have a Porsche chassis and a Porsche engine, and they have no choice but to let you run.
You pull onto the course, and run. Your rear tires scream in protest as you lay a thick patch of rubber on every turn, and to everyone's dismay, you beat their fastest lap in ANY class by a full four seconds. This does not sit well with the RUF and Gemballa guys.
The guy with the Carerra GT looks about ready to kill you.
You flash them a grin, collect your prizes (a set of wheels and tires and a gourmet giftbasket of wine and cheese) and depart in a cloud of tiresmoke and sooty, unburnt fuelsmoke. Your filth leaves a black residue on the white polos of the PCA.
Now you may be wondering where the hell in this precisely comes in.
The hell comes in when you tell a girl you have a Porsche, and she walks out with you to the lot to find your disgusting, harlequin FrankenPorsche sitting in the lot and promptly turns around, and calls for a cab to take her home, cos she's certainly not going with you.
Can't win em all.
End.
03/08/09
By the way, let me know where you sourced those projector headlights from a 995 911, mmm'kay?
03/08/09
03/08/09
03/08/09
Your trophy: a topless Megan Fox!
03/08/09
*snigger*
In all seriousness I'd have never taken the Elcats; they don't look anywhere near cool.
03/08/09
But a Lotus Eclats? Most people don't even know what that is! So, good luck trying to even get one of the 2-fer cars running.
03/08/09
The 911 is just a shell, it doesn't even come with the wheels, you have to bring your own. It's a blank slate, just waiting to built into the most reprehensible abomination ever seen by PCA. Fenders? Nah, Nerf bars. Flat 6? Forget it, you need to really piss the Porche-o-philes off, you need to source a Ferrari V8.
03/08/09
But the Lotus Sisters are sketchy--one "fell by the wayside" and the other was running fine until an abrupt--what?--well, until it broke 4 years ago.
And speaking of "broke" that's where you will be headed--the guy's already dropping the reserve. Even Disco-era sentimentalists are backing away from these girls. They've got my vote!
03/08/09
03/08/09
03/09/09
03/09/09
03/09/09
Or, as it is most weeks, basket case.
03/08/09
The Lotuses are probably doable, too. There are two of them, after all, so you can combine the parts to make one nice one, and then sell the leftovers after you're done. And when you're done, you'll have... a Lotus Eclat. Not one of the cool Lotuses, like the Seven, Elan or Esprit, but the Eclat. Should you be shopping for an ugly, poorly made fiberglass coupe from the seventies, the Eclat is better than a Corvette... but only a little bit better.
The Lotus, obviously, has my vote.
03/08/09
Im going to say this is a hands down for the Lotus'
There are plenty of people in my area that work on Porsches. Lots of places where Porsches congregate (wait to die) but few places where Id see a Porsche.
If there are plenty of Porsche shops.. then there must be plenty of Porsches.
And if there are plenty of Porsches... there must not be any Lotus Eclats for someone to piss away thousands upon hundreds of dollars trying to fix.
Im going to say..
Porsches are getting to be a dime a dozen.. I camera phone shots from virtually every ROAD going porsche ever made, except the 959.
And not a single shot.. of a Lotus.
SO...
This goes to the Lotus.
That and Id have to find a way to hitch up 2 lotus' plus the trailer.. on the back of my Accord.
C'mon, that takes some kind of stupidity there. Not to mention.. who / where / how / huh am I gonna find parts for two. Yes.. I could just kill one for the benefit of the other...
But whats the point of buying two cars?
03/08/09
03/08/09
GT1's are only for the race track... and their production numbers are far too low to be cruising around for shits and giggles.
I have shots of
911s of various years in conv and hard top
912s
928s
944s in conv and hard top
914/6's
356's in conv and hard top
968s
03/08/09
"But you'll never get to the shops! Open the door, climb over the roll cage, prime the fire extinguisher, put on the six-point harness..."
And taking someone out, who'll then ask "Why's it got a fire extinguisher?!"
03/08/09
@A strolling player: If she's gotta ask, she's not the right girl. And besides, there are a lot of cars that you're much more likely to be on fire in by the end of the night.
I'd much rather see Hamster do a review of new Porsches instead of Porschephobic Jezza, too.
03/08/09
And if every girl were like you (or the Detroit house spinner or the Volvo fanatic), the world would be a much better place. Or, at least, guys like me might have more of a chance, and there wouldn't be as many 5-cylinder Jettas around.
03/08/09
03/08/09
The Loti might be the biggest hell. One of the worst looking Lotus ever made, with a heavy dose of Seventies gender confusion. Fragile, low performance envelope, and all of the legendary build quality and reliability issues, in two aardvark looking coupes. You might think that you can make one runner using the other for parts. but what you need will be equally broken on both, and probably every other one, too. You'd be best getting a Chevy Monza, slapping a lot of bondo on it and trying to convince folks that you got yourself a real Lotus.
03/08/09
When you finish the Lotuses--and you will be finishing both--they will garner such comments as "A what?" and "Did you say Lotus the Clap?!"
03/08/09
03/08/09
The A.E.N.S.C. is far more hellish.
03/08/09
Surely there are year-unique parts and neither one seems to have any glass in it.
03/09/09
Lotus could barely build a fully functioning Eclat/Elite from a factory full of parts.
OTOH, maybe this is a way to reconnect with the roots of the Lotus experience, given that the early ones were often sold as kits in the first place.
That's it: uncompleted kit car. Sounds better, doesn't it?