An interesting write up, but not entirely correct. I know the guy that bought this and he arrived back in Munich with it on 11th Jan 2004. At the time he wrote ....
"The Lotus Lada made it to Munich !
just to drop a short note to everybody involved:
The Lotus Lada made it - we drove it to its new home to Munich ! After several "incidents", which involved a very funny and informative factory visit, the Lada showed 130 mph on the German motorway. Despite losing the clutch at Dover which meant driving without any clutch for 1000km. And despite having a slightly perforated exhaust manifold which made any in-car conversation quite a laugh.
and a special note to the puzzled looking driver of a type25 S2 (T25 LTS), this *is* a Lotus engineered car which overtook you on the M1 on Saturday. "
Stefan then drove it back to the UK for the Club Lotus Show at Donington a couple of months later. His write-up when he got home went something like this ....
"Just returned from one of the adventures to be remembered ! A big THANKYOU to everybody giving us a warm welcome and helping with transfers, accomodation, catering and so on.
We enjoyed our visit BIG style. It is just amazing how much attention the Lada gets everywhere. Not just on the show itself - people were waving at us on the motorway (maybe due to curse word driving), every stop for petrol extended into a short lecture about the car. Fabulous - you English people *are* really into cars !
As for the trip home - which was just a bit more of a funny story:
- when we left Donington, one of the remaining screws of the manifold just sheared. So 2 out of 5 left to go :-)
- sorry to the stranded Esprit on the M1, we didn't dare to stop and help due to our errmmm... legal issues with the car registration - drawing police attention wasn't really an option
- at the ferry port in Dover guess what... the clutch failed. But this time it was just the cable which had stretched a bit and could easily be re-adjusted during the channel cruise.
- when leaving Calais, the exhaust pipe (newly fitted on Thursday) sheared off totally - again a consequence of the non-existance of any flexi-section. Funnily the pipe was made of 2.5mm steel to be on the safe side... not. We limped to a truck service station nearby and analysed the damage. Soon we were accompagnied by two Slovenian lorry drivers who showed huge interest in the Lada. They didn't speak any language known to us but kept telling us stories of their life for about 30 minutes. We threw the back box into the boot and noise-tested the new "configuration"...it was erm... interesting and nearly blew up the whole petrol station. So we bridged the back box to the exhaust pipe with a Redbull can and some duct tape - you should have seen the Slovenian's faces.... but the noise level was now quite (cough...) ok. "See you" - off we went, leaving two totally startled guys.
- This morning we successfully arrived at Komo-Tec in Mendig (after having changed the "worn" RedBull flexi section several times). We had changed plans and left the car with them (to fit a full new exhaust system, drill out the manifold bolts and so on). So no need to send parts through UPS and the possibility for Komo-Tec to test and fit them directly. Daniel Koblitschek asked us how we will manage to continue our trip back home - which turned out to be an really easy game: we called the ADAC, pretended to have a breakdown and asked for a free hire car. 30 minutes later we were the proud owners of a 2 weeks-old Merc A class with 200 kms on the clock. The girl from the hire company said "just hand it back to any Sixt station when your car repair is done, I have booked the car for you for three weeks right now, if you need it more than that, just give us a call" Well thank you, automatic gearbox, 75bhp, 1.4ltr - not funny, but a really delightful service. First action of all was to put some Lotus stickers to the Merc
So we are all safely back at home right now, the Lada is going to have a fully engineered stainless exhaust system, I have a new car (a german one ) sitting in the garage and it has been just a marvellous and wonderful weekend.
See you all soon ! "
So a bit more there to add to THE FINAL WORD"