I know it's not a Lotus, but...

[tweetdriver63]

I was just looking through some pictures, and I stumbled across these of my last 914. I realize it's a Porsche, not a Lotus, but I was quite proud of it, and very unhappy when I was forced to sell due to a new baby.

When I bought it, it has a lot of needs. I had some rust repaired, and had it painted from what was its original orange, to white. I found the spoiler in a catalog. I can't remember which one, but it was there for show only, and I think it was the best looking rear spoiler I ever saw on a 914. I had the brakes rebuilt, a new performance exhaust, and I rebuilt the engine with a big-bore kit to go from the original 1.7L to 2.0L. I also re-trimmed the entire interior (did that myself), and it looked great, and I did the striping on the exterior, and the lettering on the windows myself too.

For a fairly heavy car for its size, I think it was pretty quick. The fastest I ever drove it was about 120 mph on an interstate highway in New Mexico. I backed off when I started to feel like it was coming up off the road. With some aerodynamics, I'm sure I could have gotten quite a bit more speed. Anyway, it was an extremely fun car to drive. It was really quick off the line, and it handled corners better than anything I've ever driven. The CG must've been about 6 inches off the ground, and the weight distribution was exactly 50/50. It handled like you were on one of those little electric slot car tracks -- zero lean.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of my first open-top car. The one that sold me on them.