My 1966 Lotus Elan S2 has gone. Just think of the size of hole that will leave in my life – or would do had it been sold outright rather than swapped for a far more family friendly Elan +2 and a wodge of money that should keep the bailiffs at bay for a few months.
You can see a lot more on my new car in the May issue of C&SC (and we also have some video we'll be uploading), but this is a plan I have been hatching for a while with my co-conspirator Paul Matty because I couldn't handle the thought of not being an Elan owner and he was sympathetic to my plight. Hell, even my eBay ID is Elan-related.
To begin with, I thought I would get away with this whole parting thing fairly unemotionally, but even just a pre-sale evening spent sorting through my files, looking for bills and photos to pass on with the car, had me going all misty eyed (others might call it welling up), so I decided I might as well wallow in it.
I'm not sure how old I was when I realised I wanted an Elan. It was certainly long before I drove my first sometime in the late 1980s. That one ticked all the cliche boxes as I was driving down a single-track lane around Chobham, Surrey, and the lights decided it was time for bed.
It was a full decade of loafing, followed by meaningful employment, before I indulged myself for real.
I had been running a Lancia Delta Integrale as a company car at C&SC and, when the publisher could no longer stomach the bills – which wasn't after very long at all – I opted out of the company car scheme in order to buy a classic.