rolexa

Oh, I almost forgot. The Biggles reference is priceless! Hadn't thought of Biggles, as his image was tarnished by the Monty Python skit "Biggles dictates a Letter". Always thought of myself as a combination of LJK Setright and "Ace" Rimmer (Red Dwarf Season 4 Episode 5)

Thank you for the kind words Mike! And I certainly see eye to eye with you on your original assumption. Luckily I don't need to be one of those guys that sets keeps dipping the price until bids happen. For the cars I love vs the ones whose novelty quickly dissipates, I've always been more of a "you need to want this more than me" seller. There are a number of cars out there that I was instrumental in creating that have ecstatic second owners that know the day they tire of it, I want to be first in line to buy it back. I'm not familiar with the dutch auction strategy. Always something new to learn. Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that and see how I can keep from creating the impression I apparently did with you. For me, this car was an opportunity to create what I didn't have the first time around. I owned an original Lotus seven in 1977, SB1374. I acquired the car in pieces and set about rebuilding it. It had a 948 cc BMC A motor at the time. I quickly came to the understanding that Lotus 7's were meant to be driven by Jockeys, not Linebackers. First order of business was to find a place for the legs and feet. A rebuilt pedal box fixed that, and I was "off to the races". Unfortunately, 36 HP wasn't my dream performance, and before I could rectify that along came the first child and the new associated expenses. So SB1374 got sold and I became a father. Fast Forward a shit-tonne of years. The urge for a high perf Super Seven never left. I looked at DSK cars and the random seven on the market, but only became committed when, in the early '90's Caterham said they could make a car to fit me. Cool, sign me up! And there began a new odyssey to create the car I was unable to afford years earlier. Plotting planning scrimping to get all the bits necessary to build the "Ultimate 7" And of course, the Ultimate 7 would need the engine that was out of reach for me during my stewardship of SB1374: A Cosworth BDA. No Vegatune crossflow, no Vauxhall. Nothing would do except for a BDA, which is what this car proudly carries. Selling a car such as this is always a painful experience. One can always buy an "off the shelf" model, but the cars I've had built to my personal view of the world are special. They are truly one off creations built to my whim, not to mass market sensibilities. It takes time, but patience always found the "right" buyer: the guy who says "this is the car I dreamed of and sketched in High School" or "This is the car I would have built if I had the resources 20 years ago". Now that last one sounds familiar. Nice thing is someone has a brief opportunity to buy there dream at a 50% discount over what it would cost to recreate this car in 2016. Sometimes someone gets lucky. I want that lucky person to love this car as much as I did/do, and to see it as the pinnacle of their automotive dream, same as I did when I designed it. Thands again for the kind words. Hopefully the right person might drop by this forum, find this likd, and say "Damn, just what I dreamed about 20years ago" "Wonder where it is" Well if I find the right buyer, I'll know who currently owns my car, and also know the new buyer has to compete with me to buy the car from it's current owner ron

Per Croc: "The Biggles Caterham in Georgia with BDA/BDR is still on Ebay at a starting bid of $39000. 3 days to run and no bids tells me that it will be relisted with a lower starting price in a few days. Given a BDR Caterham S3 (similar look but red and ali with no scarves) went for $31k area last year and the market pricing has softened quite a lot since then, I suspect $39k upwards will be a stretch unless just the right buyer turns up" Don't count on it. First, I've owned this car for almost 24 years and still love it. Like all my British cars, it was built to my standards to fit my physical size requirements. The only reason I listed the Caterham and 3 other cars, was that I needed a garage space for my latest acquisition. Luckilly my least favorite car sold first so the pressure is off. Second, I am not in the habit of relisting at lower prices. Why would I negotiate against my self? You and I both know that selling is exposure. If someone is truly interested, they'll reach out and either accept the asking price or make an offer if they think the ask is too high. Then it's my job to determine whether I'd rather hold the asset or part with it at the named price. When this listing runs it's course, you may not see this car available again for years.

Neither confused or clueless. Caterham marketed the car as a Cosworth BDR, so I used the Caterham naming convention as an identifier of the model. The engine is a BDA with steel crank, 10.5:1 compression and BD3 cams, so I called the engine what it is: a BDA. Confusing to the casual reader, with limited Caterham knowledge? Maybe, but that's not my intended audience. As noted it was properly built by Hasselgren racing engines in Berkley CA. It is NOT a Cosworth BDR engine kit, which was nothing more than the head/piston/intake/exhaust/misc parts necessary to "convert" a Kent crossflow engine to a Cosworth BD. Replica? Again neither clueless nor confused. I merely attempted to draw the lineage of the Caterham cars whick are direct descendants of the Lotus Super Seven, based upon the same blueprints and design as the original car. No other manufacturer (Birkin, Superformance, Westfield, etc) can make that claim. BRD, Well, you got me there. Now your job is to go find the other two typo's I'm too lazy to go fix. And finally, the scarves. I'm shocked at the amount of traffic this minor item generated. Glad I left them on, as it seems to be the thing that brings people to the ad! As far as clueless on that one, obviously you lot are too young to have seen or remember that this was common motoring dress in the years leading to and post WWII. The vintage WW1 RAF leather "helmet", a set of aviator goggles and a flying scarf (the ones on the car are vintage US Army Air Corps flying scarves). As far as clueless goes, y'all could never have driven any serious miles in a 7. Personally, I like the set up more than a full face helmet when driving the car. Without some protection, driving gets to be a very uncomfortable experience, and at speed my glasses attempt to fly off my face. So as long as I need the lid and goggles, why not go for the whole retro experience? I always get "thumbs up" from other drivers when tooling around the back roads of Georgia.