A LOTUS IS REBORN
Image of Yellow Europa
You may have been following the story of my 1972 Lotus Europa Twincam, from it’s first purchase as a 21st birthday present by my parents, to more recent times, after I had spent nearly twenty years without PBF 611M, but after years of searching, the little Europa was back in my grasp and being restored by "experts".
Well, the day dawned in May 2003, when I was able to pick up the Europa from the paint shop In Blackburn and trailer it behind my Subaru Impreza WRX some 285 miles down to Surrey, where it now resides.
You ought to be able to observe from the above photograph, that the Paint shop guys managed to persuade me to have PBF 611M resprayed in its original Lotus yellow, and not the gleaming black it had proudly boasted back in 1982/3.
However, the bright yellow is probably more suitable for today’s busy roads; as I recall that back in the early 1980’s, I had more than one juggernaut attempt to drive over the top of that tiny black thing, that nobody seemed to be able to see below the roofs of other road users!
Whenever I now sit in my Europa, it brings back such fond memories of when I had eyesight, my father was alive and I used to terrorise the neighbourhood thinking I was some kind of Steve McQueen driving in the LeMans 24 hour race!
As an asides, while I was searching around the cockpit I found the original tax disc; it stated that the road tax ran out in April 1984... and more... both licences were also in the holder from 1982 and 1983, the very one's I had purchased back in Blackburn, Lancashire, all those years ago!
PBF 611M is now a priceless part of my life, one which will never be sold, because I’ve now learnt that there’s more to life than money and our friendship can never be severed…
[Copyright] AlliedLaw 2003