Once upon a time, when I was a car salesman, and truth, while not stranger than fiction, was certainly rarer, I found myself in a shiny little showroom peddling Lotuses and Alfa Romeos. The Lotus of the day was the Elan, a wonderful, lumpy little papier-mâché roadster capable of outdragging a 327 Chevelle from light to light, eating a Porsche on a canyon road, and putting a halfshaft right through its trunk floor all in the same afternoon. Killer.
We had taken a Lotus Elite in trade on an Elan. We repainted the Elite dark green {not British racing green) on the bottom and silver on top, shined the few bits of stainless trim, polished the wires, detailed the Godiva badge on the little Climax engine, then parked it on…
