The Practical Lotus…and the Impractical Way I Got It Home.

[EM One Hundred]

After a LOCO outing one summer’s day in 1999, (LOCO being the acronym for Lotus Colorado, and, more apt than one would think at first glance) wherein I had a chance to drive Jim Collins’ M100 Elan, I thought I should get one. This Elan is quite different from the original Elan: in time (1991) and design (Front wheel drive, transverse turbocharged engine, eight inches longer but a foot wider, it even has air conditioning). I was well and truly hooked. This is a car that does everything well – it’s quick, fast, handles well, has lots of room, even trunk space for two, and is a convertible. With sudden summer rainstorms common in Colorado, that is a very nice attribute, since my Seven has no weather protection and my original Elan top takes a solid ten minutes to erect by which time the rain may well have passed leaving everything in the car plus the top erector soaking wet.

But M100 Elans are sort of funny looking in that they are very wide for their length. In a word they look…stubby. To maximize the car’s appeal, color becomes very important and I therefore decided if I were to get one it would have to be yellow or nothing - Norfolk Mustard yellow to be precise. Now, there were only 546 M100 Elans ever imported to the USA of all colors and of these only 53 were Norfolk Mustard yellow. The movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” used about five, leaving only forty some yellow cars out there, less than one per state. The other thing about M100 Elans is that I was not the only one who was aware of how fun and practical a ride it is, so most owners were holding on to theirs. My search took over a year and went far afield.

I found one in Phoenix and was well into negotiations; the seller and I had agreed on a price. The next day he sold it to someone else for more and told me to go suck eggs. I was back to square one. I had seen a car in Hawaii, but thought it would be too expensive and difficult to get it back to the mainland. Nonetheless, I was pretty much out of options so I inquired about that car. To my surprise, the very nice woman selling the car was in the import business in Honolulu and had close ties with several shipping companies. She was only too willing to give me a fixed price including shipping to any of three US ports – Long Beach or Oakland, CA, or Tacoma, WA. Since my daughter lives in Seattle, Tacoma was the easy choice. So I bought the car and waited for shipping dates to be determined so I could plan my flight to Seattle-Tacoma. A few weeks later I flew to SeaTac where my daughter met me to give me a ride to the port of Tacoma and the waiting Elan on the 4th of December 2000. I now had 1,350 miles to get home. In a car I had only seen in photos. Over the Continental Divide. In winter. Well planned, Ross. Well planned!

For those of you not familiar, as I was not, with transporting a car on a ship, there are a number of ironclad rules. The first is that the car must be shipped with a minimal amount of gasoline in the tank. The second is that the longshoremen are in control - until they tell you that you can touch the car, you must stay away. So it was that I could see the little yellow car, which was technically mine, but I could not get near it for about 45 minutes while they searched the car and reviewed paperwork. Think of a TSA body cavity security screening without the nice uniforms.

At last it was time to get my car! I opened the door and slid in to sit in her for the first time. She looked pretty good - at least as good as the photos so that was a relief. I stuck the key into the ignition switch and turned it. Nothing! Zip, Nada, Zilch. Not even a click. The door light cast a feeble glow so I knew there was some power but not enough to even trigger the solenoid. Well, I thought, they must have a source to jump a battery. This couldn’t be the first time a car had arrived with a dead battery, so I went in search of one of the port guys. When I found one he said he had a jump start cart since this happens all the time. Apparently the continuous small drain of the electronics in more modern cars, such as this modern car from 1991, is enough to deplete the battery in the two weeks or more from drop off in Hawaii to pick up in Tacoma.

So back to the Elan we went with the jump cart. I opened the hood to hook things up and there was no battery. “Oh, it must be in the trunk”, I said. I closed the hood with gusto and went to open the trunk where I found: exactly nothing. So here I am in the Port of Tacoma with a willing but impatient longshoreman expecting me to know this car I am seeing for the very first time. I did the only thing I could think of; something very out of character for me. I got out the owner’s manual and looked up the location of the battery. It turns out that it is under the soft top stowage compartment behind the cockpit, and it requires three steps to get to it. Unlatch the soft top and lift it forward, away from the back deck of the cockpit, and while holding it just so, release the latch for the deck cover, tilting it rearward. Then with your third hand, while holding the two other parts, lift the cover which forms the bottom of the storage compartment in order to access the battery. Now, with another hand while holding all these, attach the jumper cables to the correct posts in the dark “well” and simultaneously walk around to the driver’s seat and twist the key. Easy! Luckily, my longshoreman was a “car guy” and willing to assist and even more luckily, she started right up with the jump. Problem one - Man solved.
Problem two presented itself immediately as the low fuel light shone brightly now that there was juice from the alternator. So, I query Mr. Longshoreman, “Where is the nearest gas station?” He gives me directions and, with my daughter following, I prayerfully head out of the Port to the byzantine array of streets hoping I can find this mythical gas station while trying to familiarize myself with the controls of this strange car, all before I run out of fuel.

Well, we found the gas station after only one small detour and as I pulled up to the pumps I decided to leave the car running for a couple of reasons. First, I had no jumper cables and had no desire to go through that Rube Goldberg process again and, two, it was only about 37 degrees F and I wanted to get some heat into the car for my trip. I like my comfort! The gas door on the Elan is right behind the driver’s door and has a remote release. But where? Again with the manual! I am beginning to feel like a rookie driver. I find it and open the filler door, put the nozzle into the tank with the auto shutoff set and go off to clean the windshield. Scrubbing away I get a vague sense of something wrong as I get a very strong smell of gasoline. I turn away from my windshield cleaning and realize I am standing in a lake of gasoline which is coming from beneath my still running car and the still running pump. Seeing a potential “Towering Inferno” I run over, stop the pump, hang the hose and roll the car away from the spill, trailing gas as I go.

After getting off the asphalt and onto the graveled area, I shut off the car figuring I can bump start it if I have to but I really don’t want to deal with a fire. Now I must wait for the leak to stop though it still drips steadily from the gas tank onto the parking lot gravel and disappears. After about 10 minutes the dripping has stopped. During that time I had called Hawaii on my cell phone and reached Cindy the seller. “What the hell is the story with the leaking gas tank,” I cry. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you” she says, “You can only put in about 7 ½ gallons or it will leak out a crack on the side of the tank. That gets you about 200 miles though so don’t worry…just don’t overfill it and you’ll be fine!” OK, I put that on my list of things to deal with when I get home. For now I can only get 2/3 the range per normal tankful so I will just have more stops. My daughter shakes her head in a gesture that says “This is my ancestral lineage? I’m toast!” She gives me a hug, wishes me well, and gets in her reliable Toyota built sedan with a look that says “Don’t call me when that Lotus thing breaks down like I know it will” I wave goodbye and start for Colorado, now only 1,345 miles away.

As I head south on Interstate 5 toward Portland where I will turn east along the Columbia River, I fiddle with the heating and lighting controls. Now I know I could have looked these up in the manual too, but where’s the fun in that? I get the lights and wipers figured out but no matter what setting I choose for the heating and vent, all I can get is cold air. It isn’t bad here in Washington, though I’m not exactly comfortable, and we have already established that I do like my comfort, but when I get into the high altitude parts of Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, I want HEAT! Remembering that my old racing buddy Jim Hegy has a brother in Olympia WA which I am just entering, I call him to get his brother Bill’s number. Calling Bill I get lucky again. He is at home and says come on over. He has tools, knowledge and a garage…the traveler’s trifecta!

After a short scenic drive I find Bill’s house out on a beautiful point by Puget Sound. After showing me around his perfect setting and lovely home, Bill starts looking at the engine compartment. In only a moment he says, “I see the problem. The heater hoses have been cut and plugged.” Apparently, in an effort to get better air conditioning performance, someone took the heater core out of the system to make sure no residual heat got through. In a few minutes we had the hoses reconnected added some coolant to the now larger capacity system and…wait for it… we got warm air from the heater vents! Now fully equipped to take on the Arctic, I thanked Bill and headed for Colorado, now only 1,335 miles away. Are you sensing a pattern here?

Off I went, cruising serenely toward Portland and getting comfortable with the car. It really did drive well and had plenty of spunk. I even got a few honks and thumbs up as I cruised down I-5. One thing did begin to bother me though. The top which was supposed to seal against the cockpit deck, did not. There was about an inch gap pretty much across the whole back and the amount of cold air that came in was prodigious. At temperatures in the high thirties it was an annoyance but at much colder temperatures I was expecting across the Rockies it would be downright cold. So at my first overnight stop in eastern Oregon, I attempted a duct tape repair to seal the void. The next morning as I briskly accelerated onto I-84 I was pleased that it lasted all the way to the end of the entrance ramp. Flapping duct tape adds so much ambiance to a road trip doesn’t it?

Over the pass from Pendleton to Baker City Oregon I wended my way, heat fully on. This kept my feet and face warm but the cold air on the back of my neck was only solved by a parka with a hood that I pulled up tightly around my head. Down through Idaho, even with stops every 200 miles or so to refuel, I made pretty good progress. The Elan felt very comfortable at a 3,500 rpm cruise which translates to about 75 miles an hour; a rate that made good progress without attracting any law enforcement. This was the fastest speed I had ever made on one of my trips to bring home a Lotus I had found. As the fellow who fell off the top of the Empire State Building said to the window washer as he passed him at the 58th floor…so far so good.

Just as I was about to enter Utah, the snow began in earnest. I now understand the name of the first “town” in Utah on I-84. It is called Snowville. Really just a gas station, café and seedy motel, the place certainly earned its name that day. It was snowing at a rate of easily an inch per hour, but was I nervous? No. The defroster worked, the heater worked and the wipers worked and I can explain why. This was the first Lotus I knew of where the electrical stuff was Delco instead of Lucas, one of the few benefits of General Motors share of ownership in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Gradually, as the road headed downhill toward Salt Lake City, the weather improved and the snow turned to rain and then diminished altogether. Just past Ogden, I-84 turns east and goes through a lovely valley toward its junction with I-80 east of the Wasatch Range. Stopping for gas again I took off layers of clothes as the weather had improved so much that I actually welcomed the breeze from the gap in back. Refueled and refreshed with a power meal of a Snicker’s bar and a Coke, I felt so good I actually thought about driving straight through to Denver even though it would mean a post-midnight arrival. As I mentioned about passing the window washer at the Empire State building earlier, I wasn’t done yet.

Almost immediately after turning east on I-80 the snow started again. The temperature dropped and the wind picked up as the road gained altitude. Within five miles I was in a full-fledged winter storm. I put my parka back on and cranked up the heat. For the first time, I was glad this Lotus had front wheel drive. It was as stable as – well – a stable. I pressed on. The sky got darker and the wind got stronger. I pressed on. Along the side of every Interstate highway are these green steel T posts with little round white reflectors on top about 250 feet apart. Normally I would barely notice them but today I did. The little reflector would shine back at me out of the frenzied flakes that made me feel like I was in one of those little winter scene snow globes you shake up to make a storm. Finally, the visibility was so bad that I was actually driving from post to post. Each time I would pass one of these posts, my headlights could just pick up the next reflector. So for the next thirty miles or so, over an hour at the speed I was going, that is how I drove -focused on the right side of the road so I wouldn’t go off into a ditch or into the other lane. It was an exhausting hour since the big rig truckers could apparently see much better from their elevated perches and would come roaring by in a swirl of white.

Slowly but steadily I climbed the grade and made it into Wyoming. At Evanston, just inside the Wyoming line, I pulled off the Interstate to get fuel and recharge the battery. Not the car’s–mine! I was wiped out. All the focused energy had meant I gripped the wheel so tightly my hands hurt. My plan to get home that night was shelved. I would be happy to make Rock Springs. Even this plan was soon put paid as a state trooper who came into the gas station office, where I was warming up a bit, told me that I-80 was closed both directions until further notice. I got back in the Elan and drove into beautiful, downtown, Evanston - about ¼ mile. There I got the next to last room in a motel, walked across the parking lot to a diner, had some supper, walked back to the motel room and went to sleep. I was toast.

I slept so soundly I had no idea how bad the storm had been when I awoke the next morning. I found a white hump about the size of a VW Bug where my tiny Elan had been the night before. 15” had fallen they said and it was mighty cold. Maybe there would be another night in snow bound Evanston. After brushing the snow away with my gloved hands, (why would I have a snow brush with me?) I tried to start the poor, cold car. To my surprise and delight it fired right up. I cleaned the rest of the car a bit better while the defroster did its job on the windshield and decided to attempt a circle around the motel parking lot as a trial run to see if I could even make forward progress through the deep snow. As it turns out the Elan is a pretty good snow car. The FWD and the front air-dam let it just doze a path through the soft snow of the parking lot. I felt like a trailblazer! So, I loaded my stuff and myself into the car and headed for eastbound I-80.

Upon reaching the entrance ramp, I found that the big rigs had already created a rut path up the ramp and onto the highway. All the trucks that had preceded me, getting an early start while I was still dreaming, seemed content to follow in the same path at about 25 mph. This meant that the snow that had been pushed out of the ruts made a hard pack between ruts about 18” tall so changing lanes would be virtually impossible. I did what anyone with a low clearance car would do…I stayed in the conga line of trucks at 25 mph. After about an hour or so the snow depth tapered off, and by the time we passed Little America I was able to change lanes and increase my speed to about 35 mph. At this rate I could be home by midnight.

The further east we went the lower snowfall levels became and by Rock Springs the snow was pretty minimal. At the same time temperatures were rising and what little snow there was started melting. Now I could change lanes at will! My speed increased along with my spirit and the rest of the trip home was pretty routine at speeds more like I had been achieving in Oregon and Utah before the snow. I pulled into my garage in time for supper, tired but with a sense of achievement at triumphing over a pretty big storm in a pretty small car.

Some changes needed to be made and they were. Lotus Cars USA (Thanks Dave Simkin!) replaced the gas tank under a warranty recall so I could fill it to the top and I had a new soft top installed properly so it sealed as it was supposed to. I got a new set of tires and wiper blade assemblies, had a stereo installed and gave her a good clean and polish. It has been our faithful companion ever since, carrying Ann and me to lots of places in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, but never again in a snow storm. If we ever do get into one though, I’ll bet we’d do fine…this is a practical Lotus!

[epipete]

Great story Ross, this is what makes this site so good.

[novacaine]

Nice story, thank you for sharing. Must be in the run for longest textual post too

[Ian T]

Love it - great story and big taboo busted - who says sports cars are no good in the snow!

[GeoffSmith]

Brilliant story Ross and it brings back fond memories of our run from SLC to Fort Collins and ultimately the LOCO meeting in Denver in Summer 2011. I can't remember it being quite that cold though.

[lotos]

Fun read, thanks Ross. Are you Ross Robbins of LoCo?

[HJ2]

Hahaha! This was some pretty good reading.
It read a bit like a Rory Block song, where she tries to get home for the entire song (Far away from home)
What a road trip and one hell of a way to get acquainted with your car! I hope to read some more stories (but don't wish you the misfortune as an inspiration for further stories )

Welcome to the club of enthousiasts!

[Rob P]

Great story, really does show how tough these little cars are

[theelanman]

[EM One Hundred]

Thanks for all the kind words. As I said in my comment to Ted Taylor, I really use my cars and appreciate those who also use them a lot.

To there's only on f in Geof Smith: The key word in your comment is “Summer”.
To Randy: Yes, I am “that guy”.

And to HJ2: IF you’d like some more stories, this post is one of 18 stories about trips I have taken in my many Lotus cars and a couple others in a book called Road Trip! All have some obstacle overcome and are generally positive outcomes…victory snatched from the jaws of oblivion as it were. THere is at least one other M100 story called "The Off Road Lotus". Use your imagination on that one.

In the USA it is available here:www.amazon.com/Road-Trip-Chasing-skies-forever/dp/0615771971/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378043514&sr=1-11&keywords=road+trip

Or in the UK you can find it here: www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Road+Trip+Chasing+Blue+Skies

[lotos]

Hi Ross - we've met several times over at LoCo events, I've been absent the last few years since I started having kids but still active here in the Elan world

You've relocated to the springs? Good luck to ya!

[DeanG]

I hear that you will be attending LOG 34 in the M100. See you there. Maybe you will have a new story to tell.