Hello Folks,
 
Thank you all for your friendly welcome to the CLUB LOTUS chat circuit. I've been reading some of the correspondence and I must say I'd no idea how knowledgeable and devoted everyone would be.
 
Mike Ostrov asked me to search my memory of my days at Lotus for the USA Club Elite Newsletter and the Chat List [why is it called a Chat List ? ].   It's around 40 years since I was working at Lotus in Cheshunt so the old grey-matter is getting a bit rusty-red. He is also interested in the development of my TC Elite [TC = twin-cam]. There isn't much to tell there because the engine was in the car when I got it, bolted to a sychromesh-free MG-A gearbox which I threw away and installed a 2000E c/r Ford box instead. I could help with details/drawings etc if anyone's thinking of fitting a Lotus twin-cam or Ford Cortina box into their Elite (did I hear cries of 'sacrilege' ) but when I was at Lotus no-one had combined Elite with Twin-cam.
 
The twin-cam was being developed as the successor to the highly successful 5-bearing Ford-based Cosworth racing engine and a prototype had been installed in a road-going 105E Ford Anglia. A sort of rolling test-bed. The story goes that Jim Clark one Friday evening after a late session was short of a ride home to Scotland for the weekend, so Colin gave him this Anglia and waved him off.  No-one bothered to tell him what it contained. When he reported back on the Monday he is reputed to have said, "Bloody Hell!  It frightened the life out of me. You might have warned me. I could have killed myself. Once I got used to it it was great fun. I got home in record time and certainly raised a few eyebrows." That's the gist of what he said anyway.
 
At that time Lotus Development was working on the Elite successor, the Elan. There were a couple of these lying about, partly built prototypes. One day there was a buzz going around - they had something locked up in a secure bay, covered with a sheet. Top secret!  When no-one was around we snuck in and found under the sheet a never-before-seen Ford saloon. I expect you've guessed. It was a pre-launch Ford Cortina, and of course it was there to be transformed into the magical "Lotus Cortina", or as dear Henry called it "The Ford Consul Cortina developed by Lotus". Both these ve-hicles were fitted with the 1558cc Lotus twin-cam or as Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth called it .... just kidding!
 
Dick Mcgovern in his welcome note said "I would like to meet the guy who wrote the ' workshop manual' and do something to him... " 
No!  I think we'll save that for another day.
 
 Tony.     Oct 27th 2001