Lotus Club Queensland
Dedicated to the promotion and enhancement of the Lotus experience
Login
Register
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Membership
    • Member Login
  • Events
    • Calendar
  • Motorsport
    • Lakeside DTC Timed Laps
    • LAKESIDE DTC RESULTS
  • Magazine
  • For Sale
    • Merchandise
    • Classifieds
  • Posts
  • Galleries
  • Directory
    • Suppliers & Parts
    • Advertisers
  • Archives
50-years-seven-banner

50 Years with a Lotus Seven

By John Barram.

In 1963 Lotus won their first Formula One world title then won again in 1965 and 1968. In the mid 60s as a high school boy my head was already filled with thoughts about “proper” English sports cars, driven with string-backed driving gloves.

Then among these MGs and Triumphs appeared the Lotus Seven. It hardly seemed fair! Here was a car only a few steps removed from their dominating race cars, that would blow the socks off anything else on the road, and it was road legal. I fell in love.

By 1970 I was ready to step up from my Austin Healy Sprite, when a Lotus Seven came up for sale in Brisbane. What was a young man supposed to do? So, with very little bargaining I bought my 1962 Lotus Seven.

This was to be the real Sports Car experience. Drive the car to work during the week and do car club motor sport at the weekend. I was soon into Motorkhanas, Sprints and Hillclimbs and even did a couple of trips to Sydney in the Seven. By 1975 I was looking for a bigger challenge in the Seven so decided to run it in the race meetings at Lakeside and Surfers Paradise. I did not mind being at the back of the field against dedicated racing sports cars and I usually managed to keep one or two cars behind me.

That was a lot of fun but a suspension failure at Lakeside put me into the fence and made a big mess of the front of my car. The wonderful Penny was already a part of my life and a month later we were married.

While I soon stripped the car and had the frame repaired, the project became a full restoration job and was put on hold. The plan became to fit the car with a big horsepower twin cam Lotus motor and paint it bright yellow as a fast and showy road car. The Lotus Seven was no longer a race car. This remained the dream while energy and time went into the house and then children.

In 1979/80 I raced a competitive ASP Clubman race car before sanity prevailed and I sold it to my brother and focussed on the family. Years passed.

By the mid nineties I was back onto the Seven in earnest. The goal now was to rebuild it as close as possible to a Super Seven of its era and use it for Sunday drives. Yellow was replaced by British racing green. The engine went back to the specs for a car from the sixties. Even the suspension was set up with springs and shocks for road use and the car was re-registered in 2000.

We enjoyed Sunday morning drives in the mountains and had some success as a concours car. However, it wasn’t many years before I was tempted to run in the Historic Noosa Hillclimb. Then it was Speed on Tweed and then it was doing Regularity drives at Historic Race meetings.

Meanwhile, I was getting less enthusiastic about driving the Seven in modern traffic. So we bought a ‘97 Elise as a Sunday drive car and there was even less reason to drive the Seven on the road. About this time I was introduced to open wheeler race cars and soon had a Cheetah F3 car from the seventies and was back in racing while the Seven gathered dust. However, a crash in the Cheetah and a slow restoration of that car brought the Seven to the fore again. It is now Log Booked for Historic Racing and I am enjoying racing it against other sports cars of the period.

In 50 years a lot has changed but the Seven is still with me. I suspect my first race car will also be my last race car but that will not be for some years yet!

As-bought-1970
Mt-Cotton-1975
Mt-Cotton-2007
Warwick-July-2019

[Show slideshow]
North Queensland Run Lotus Exige review

Related Posts

mp-banner

Events, Gallery 2022, Homepage, Racing

Morgan Park Sprints R4

kevs-banner

EMRs, Gallery 2022, Homepage

Kev’s Big Day Out

duratec-banner

Articles, Homepage, Technical

Duratec Elise – better late than never

Random images

117_1748_IMG
Chris
Timed-Lap-line-up
MG_6119
zephyr-wagon
04
Repast-almost-complete
Tiger_Moth_Toowoomba
118_1813_IMG
IMG_3905
4-Quiet-chat-before-days-events.jpg
McL_24
IMG_4883
IMG_4855
IMG_4439
IMG_4401
IMG_6809
image_170
lot_032
Elan_Wybe_2
Garage-7
Drive-a-round-today
Eleven-on-Car-Bench
Evans-Motorsport-Exige
Terri-and-Geoff-Musgrave-of-Lock-Load-Transport-QLD-with-Elisa-Artioli
IMG_0507-5
Group-8.4-Geoff-Noble-Elise-Honda-SC-0
Group-1.1-first-laps-A-Stevens
20180916_081757
Happy Spectators
20131005_181838
Kelly-Garry_gw
Geoff
europas-1
_MG_9168 as Smart Object-1
MG-8164
Timers
St-Hallets-hostess-with-Rebecca-and-Ian-Peters-SA
George-Rowes-Lotus11-4
9-Clive.jpg
1426859018_f63ace8db0_m_1
0068
P9190091c1
IMG_5075
IMG_8494
IMG_8483
IMG_4330
img_1082
main-21
IMG_0421
DSC03841
IMG_0019
IMG_0059
MG_7012
lotus_Ase_2417
main-14
IMG_4891
main-25
main-13
P1050428
113_1306_IMG
IMG_3705
33a
IMG_7927
PICT7256
IMG_2555
Guess_who_was_there_too
024_24
P1050441
Cane_field_run_4
IMG_6312
IMG_8069
IMG_8056
IMG_8002
IMG_7981
Pato_and_Greg
IMG_0535
rack4
Happy-Laps-2014
img_2027
Pat-Richards-trying-to-work-out-why-Geoff-is-so-fast-by-Bridie-Moran
IMG_9111
High Hopes
McLaren
IMGP8576
IMGP8651
IMG_0032
Joes car up close
IMG_8204
IMG_0856
The Crew
main-14
Packing Up
caterham-seven-air-vents
Boy talk
vyv-photo-10
John-Penny-with-Red_GW
Transport-Museum-Jag-1951
Torana XU1
Paul, all Primed

Recent Articles

  • Morgan Park Sprints R4
  • Kev’s Big Day Out
  • Duratec Elise – better late than never
  • Gold Rush Hill Sprint – 2022
  • Marburg Pub Run – 4 Sept 2022
  • Unique +2 Road Trip to Brisbane
  • Leyburn 2022
  • August 2022 DTC

Latest Gallery Images

20220220_093834 20220220_093818 20220220_093827 20220220_093743 20220220_093812 20220220_093730

Search articles by category

Archived articles

Lotus Club Queensland
© Lotus Club Queensland   |   Site by Black Eye Studios