Anaximander

Hi fellow se7en lovers. I had a very lengthy conversation with Bruce Beachman of Beachman Racing concerning the Caterham 420r that is ready to be crated and shipped to the USA. As some of you know, I had a 2008 Caterham 300r Superlight with 400 engine specs and found it to be the most intuitive responding car I had ever driven. My wife however has never ridden in any of the 5 se7enesque cars I have owned over the past 6 years. I was frankly excited to get the kit, take an inordinate amount of time building it in my garage which would have necessitated the sale of my 2019 Corvette for space and secondarily money reasons. My wife can tolerate riding in the Vette but she has never been a fan of my low-slung, open cockpit, frenetic sevenesque cars. So, after considerable talking and thinking, I sadly had to email Bruce and advise that I would not be able to take advantage of this terrific offer. As some of you may or may not know, for the under $49k price inclusive of the 2.0L 210hp Duratec and transmission, Bruce and his team take care of all of the documentation and shipping arrangements. Bruce advised that he does not charge the customer add-on fees for performing these activities and the customer is only responsible for the actual freight cost either to their home on the East Coast or to his facility in Seattle, WA. If someone wants to build their own car, Bruce advised that they are not quite like Lego's but are fabbed up such that there are no fitment worries, wiring harness worries, windscreen installation worries, etc., because these issues are taken care of at the factory. The car ships in three crates with all of the necessary components to complete the car in a relatively short period of time. Bruce also insures, as an official Caterham parts house, that should anything be missing from the kit, that he personally takes care to get expedited shipment of any missing part to complete the build. In addition to the above-mentioned services, Bruce stated that he supports all of his builder's throughout the build via email, text or phone calls as necessary as part of his responsibilities that are built into the modest money he gets for the sale of the car. If someone wants to save the $7k build fee, and have reduced shipping costs if they accepted the kit on the East Coast, the car is available through the early part of next week (end of September) to be re-routed to another destination here in the Country to facilitate a build for some lucky individual. Bruce advised that the specs are: 420r includes the following: 5-speed gearbox; Limited slip differential; Lightweight flywheel; Sport suspension pack; Uprated brake master cylinder; Carbon fiber dash; Composite race seats; Momo steering wheel; 4-point race harness; Black pack (black windscreen frame, Carbon fiber door sills, carbon fiber rear wing protectors, and black headlight bowls). R-pack instrumentation; key and gear knob; Shift light; and Polished exhaust. Bruce advised that it takes about a week for the kit to be crated for shipment and us folks on the East Coast could have the 3 crates delivered about 2-3 weeks later and about a week to clear customs and get the car to your doorstep. Bruce advised that people that are organized and methodical, seem to have a much easier time with the build and the hard things like wiring harnesses are plug and play. I hope that in the next day or two, someone will be able to jump on this terrific opportunity and keep this black beauty on the East Coast. He also said that his local custom painter said that a black car is the best starting point for someone to have the "tins" repainted in some custom color(s) of their choice. Bob Schilling

It was sold some time ago at Gator Motorsport.

Senna, Those large yellow "torpedo" looking devices with the circular hydraulic rubber collars are large inside diameter pipe bending mandrels with the size of pipe they are used for labeled on the mandrel. The larger blue machines are the actual outside diameter hydraulic pipe bending machines. The Vietz company is in Hanover, Germany. Nice looking car. Looks like your choice of repair shops was pretty spot on given the sophisticated aftermarket parts they sell and install. S1Steve, I had not seen your post. It must be very cool to see uber large pipes being worked on. I am sure that the welders who put them together are exceptionally skilled as well. I have heard that they x-ray the welds to check for integrity.

This thread reminds me of most of the expensive hobbies I have been involved in. There seems to be a standing mantra that most of us repeat to our wives periodically: "Honey, if I die, please don't sell the car (insert whatever item(s)) for what I told you I paid for it". Of course, over the years, her rejoinder has been: "If you die, I am going to sell that (name item) cheap".

Mike, Talk about a piece of history. I often had wondered until today why Weber carburetors were designed and originally manufactured in Italy. It turns out the Eduardo Weber, the son of two Swiss parents was an Italian mechanical engineer who designed the carburetor. Sadly, Weber was a Fascist and reportedly, about 18 days after the end of WW2, some resistance folks paid Weber a visit one morning at his factory and he was never seen again. He is either dead or maybe he went to work designing Holley carbs? We could possibly create a conspiracy theory tying him to American manufacturing?

John, It was likely Ward Memorial Blvd. I never talked with the driver of the car that got caught so my understanding of the story came from hearsay of some of the other IV residents at the twin towers of Francisco Torres that UCSB subsequently purchased and expanded into a 19 acre site. I do know that some of my friends at the time devised a scheme to turn on and off the lights of one of the buildings so that the letters spelled "F*CK" about 7 stories high. It stopped traffic for hours around the building as word got out of our prank. I learned to pick a simple lock during that time but was not much of a participant in the final act. An old high school chum that became an attorney was part of the cadre that pulled off that very funny stunt. IV was a hotbed of learning and excitement along with antiwar protests. Famous folks like Andy Warhol hung out in IV reportedly in about 1969. I was getting so off track and flunking out of school that I returned to LA to get my head right to continue on with college. They were certainly fun times playing in the sand dunes of Devereau School on the Pacific Ocean. Some of my group would get pretty stoned at the time. Thankfully, like Bill Clinton, I never inhaled. Kitkat, many of us have only had 1 or 2 degrees of separation from many really cool events and people. I suspect that many of us that have been drawn to seven cars have lots of stories of the very interesting people and events we have experienced along the way. It is that sort of yearning for adventures that lead us to sevens and other fun machines and people.

John, In 1968 while going to school in Santa Barbara, CA, a kid that lived in the private dorms (Francisco Torres) we lived in Isla Vista, was loaned a Lamborghini Miura S as his "school" car for a short while. The rich little so and so was clocked at some incredibly high speed on the road leading into UC Santa Barbara and a California Highway patrolman gave chase only to lose the kid in our small town. The story goes that the driver and his companion drove into the first open garage in IV, closed the garage door in an attempt to evade the Highway Patrol. Someone called the cops and you guessed it, that same HP officer responded to the call and arrested the two kids. They both went to court for something like reckless endangerment or some such thing and the judge sentenced the two students to something like 2 months of weekend lockup so they could continue to matriculate in school. The passenger reportedly complained to the sentencing judge that he had not been driving and reportedly the judge had admonished him that he could have turned off the engine and thrown the keys out the window to stop the recklessness so was guilty by association and inaction. I fawned over that Lamborghini as I only had a lowly red 1964 Triumph TR4. Long story short, I think that the family took back the Lambo and that was my first close up regular contact in the parking lot, on a regular basis for a brief period of time, with what turned out to be one of the first supercars ever put into "production". 12 cylinders of handmade beauty was that engine (3.9L V12). Of course, growing up in Southern California, if there were 7 examples of any truly exotic car in the USA, usually 4 or 5 of those examples would be in Southern Cal. It was an amazing time in the burgeoning era of supercars. I was lucky enough to run a Country Club parking lot and the nightmarish stories about lot workers going on joy rides was not completely a myth:driving: The only thing is that I didn't realize that some of the original Cobras and other exotics I was parking would become multi-million dollar pieces of rolling history.

Skip, There are 2020 Vettes galore down here in Florida. Just go to Cargurus and you will find a half dozen of them for sale. Some at actual MSRP.

The Vette is a bit tame in some respects. Power to weight ratio could not match my Stalkers and the fun factor of my 300/400r Caterham that I had for a short time. I still want to autox but don't want to take a relatively porky and new Corvette out and bung up the paint with cones:smash: Besides, a set of tires for the Vette cost almost half of what the Miata cost was to purchase the car. The Vette doesn't require any wrenching whereas the Miata needs some TLC and I am learning its relatively simple systems. Where sevenesque cars have a fairly "open" architecture, the Vette is shrouded in covers that discourage jumping in with wrenches. Different horses for different courses as they sometimes say.

Croc, I can't believe that you finally realized that our Storkers look better than Donkervoorts! OTOH, the 1.5g's that Stalkers can pull turned out to be a bit much for my old inner ears. This past year, I went jazzing around very tight twisties in the North Carolina mountains with a Stalker XL and realized on the second day that I was experiencing some disequilibrium. Having been a professional pilot in another life (but not trying to fly my Stalker like Shane), I realized that my 70ish body was not liking a constant diet of g forces. Well, that just saved me a cool $187k. I did pick up a 1995 Miata a couple of months ago that I have been mechanically preparing to screw around with some street tire autocrossing. I don't know, having owned 5 sevenesque cars if the Miata will prove to be fun enough to continue to play with? For $4k, I can sure tell you that it was cheaper than any ragged out 7 that I could have found. However, when I read some of the car porn being thrown around on this site, I still miss the rawness of my 7 experiences. Bob

As an anecdotal data point, I reached Hunter, one of Hayes' sons at Wirewheel yesterday and alerted them to our thread and the family was aware of the critical posting on BAT. Hunter who has extensive sports car experience and likely some limited seven experience reported that he had driven the Rotus and it seemed to handle appropriately. The folks at Wirewheel have very extensive experience buying, rehabbing and selling Lotus cars, especially Elises. They also have personally raced a bunch of different high performance race cars that constantly flow through their inventory.

I found this beautiful 1991 RHD Westfield SEiW (wide body) in Phoenix with reportedly 17k miles for $16k or reasonable offer. The owner reportedly has redone some of the mechanicals and interior. https://phoenix.craigslist.org/nph/cto/d/phoenix-lotus-seven-westfield-sei/7118191799.html

Hayes at Wirewheel never listed a price for the few days he had it up on his website AFAIK.

Bonjo2, Those Storkers are pure hoodlum buggies! However, when it comes to power to weight, that sport bike that blew by you in the tunnel likely had the edge but not four wheels on the ground. I sold my LS3 Storker XL for a 2019 Vette but miss some of the raw hooliganism that is inherent in the Stalker DNA. Thanks for sharing. Bob

Mike, It appears that the folks at Wirewheel in Vero Beach, Florida that was a few miles from my rental home last year may have decided to put this car up on Bringatrailer. It was on their website as a new arrival for a couple of days this month and then was taken off and apparently placed with BAT. Seems as if BAT is the place to obtain higher than usual valuations for some of our cars. Good for sellers, kind of risky for buyers. However, the owner of Wirewheel is a good guy and usually has quality products for sale. Hayes, the owner of WW has a 2005 Lotus Elise with a turbocharged K24 Honda engine that only has 4k miles and would be the bomb. If I didn't have the Vette to play with and use as my formerly daily driver before Covid, I would love to have that special Elise with only 4k miles.

You guys are being too esoteric! Vodka is the answer. It can help with toothaches, bad breath, virus laden countertops, etc. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/drinks/a18825988/vodka-health-benefits/

Mike, Unfortunately, I think you are right on the money (pun intended), about the value of our beautiful discretionary toys taking some financial hits moving forward for a period of time. As many smart people have opined, this is somewhat of a perfect storm from a health and economic standpoint and "business as usual" will become a faint memory for a period of time. Our decade plus boom where sevenesque cars on sites like Bring-A-Trailer for the past year seemed to be commanding prices that were "frothy" will likely come back to earth. Sadly, some of our really great vendors such as Beachman Racing may have gotten caught in a squeeze with the rollout of their parts inventorying that was absolutely not of their making. I hope that their strategy can persist with some of us who can continue to afford to benefit and support their forward thinking, concerning marketing and services for Caterhams in the USA.

Mike, That is indeed one of the cars. The car comes with a small, non-spec fuel tank (8.5 gallons IIRC) that someone would likely want to replace with a larger one. The air conditioner never worked properly and reportedly the guts have been removed with an oil cooler placed inside the engine bay where some of the former a/c plumbing was, but not the actual front end of the system, which is still inside the cockpit.

Croc, You could rent your paddock when not using it. It is so clean and tidy that you could rent it out as a Day Surgery Center and take the rental proceeds and pay for support staff at your new Winter home in Thonotosassa, Florida. I'll make sure to pop on down to your new "home" track and see what my porky Vette can do. Bob

Anker, Where is the maid's quarters? BTW, I didn't know that you owned a Checrolet (See your car list)? I bought a Checrolet Vette but don't own a Checrolet Volt.

Wow, it is only 1.25 hours South of our current home. Sadly, my spouse is tired of cooking and cleaning and with the acquisition costs, I don't think we could swing any domestic help? Thankfully, I am not that crazy about some of the cars in the "garage" so feel less sad than I could have.

I am not a bird, I am a Stork! And Pee Wee took me and my flock buddy, Mr. Bill, out. With that goofy outfit, I bet he couldn't even drive a Se7en worth a darn. Les Suave

IIRC, the tubing that Dennis and Scott used on the Classic Stalkers was 1.25" OD vs 1.0" on the Caterhams. Those old GM 3.8 liter iron engines with aluminum heads (?) actually weigh more than a modern LS GM engine. Finally, it is likely that the C10 axles add significant weight.

Very well said!!!

Nah. More like about 1860 pounds. At least, that is what my XL weighed with 1/2 fuel and the slightly less powerful LS3/480. I suspect that the LS3/525 does not weigh anymore than my former engine. He does have the wings and attachment hardware for them that might add 140 pounds so I would guess that the number may be pretty accurate. He likely had to take it to a weigh station prior to getting it licensed here in Florida. I remember having to take a Classic Stalker to a scrap yard, hop out of the car and get a weight ticket so that I could change the registration from Texas to Florida. The Classic Stalker only weighed about 1400 pounds IIRC with a 3.8L n/a engine.