Lotus 7 S4 Reg. SRO744J
Discussion
I grew up in Caterham, born 1960, so got into cars in the early to mid 70's. My best mate's older brother at that time was a mechanic at Caterham Cars when it was at Town End, Caterham, building Lotus 7's from kits among other stuff.
We would spend our school holidays and spare time hanging around the sales office and showroom, surrounded by Lotus 7s, Elans, Europas, Marcos 3 litres etc, all really exciting stuff for us teenage petrolheads! To us these were real exotic cars with things like electric windows, and stereos with balance control so you could switch the sounds from side to side. And the stubby little gear levers in them!
One afternoon the salesman, Peter Mitchell, asked me if I'd ever been over 100mph in a car; when I said no he said 'right, come on then', and took me out in a Lotus 7 S4, along Hayes Lane around Kenley airfield, which was NSL in those days. 100+ no problem! I can still remember the registration plate, it was SRO744J, a red Seven with a matt black noseband.
My mates brother then left (to work for BT of all things!) but was asked back to do evening work assembling a 7 for a customer, so we had the run of the showroom in the evenings while he was working, playing in the cars. There were 3 rows of three cars, and we worked out that by moving them around a bit we had room to push one about in the middle and get a tyre squeal by letting the clutch up when in gear!
It was all very relaxed, even when the boss saw us, he'd just say 'don't press the accelerators lads' but that was it, and left us to it. I think that would have been Graham Nearn, but can't be sure. Great days! H&S would never allow it now.
So that's it, hence my interest in that car, surprise in it still existing, and wonder where it is today.
We would spend our school holidays and spare time hanging around the sales office and showroom, surrounded by Lotus 7s, Elans, Europas, Marcos 3 litres etc, all really exciting stuff for us teenage petrolheads! To us these were real exotic cars with things like electric windows, and stereos with balance control so you could switch the sounds from side to side. And the stubby little gear levers in them!
One afternoon the salesman, Peter Mitchell, asked me if I'd ever been over 100mph in a car; when I said no he said 'right, come on then', and took me out in a Lotus 7 S4, along Hayes Lane around Kenley airfield, which was NSL in those days. 100+ no problem! I can still remember the registration plate, it was SRO744J, a red Seven with a matt black noseband.
My mates brother then left (to work for BT of all things!) but was asked back to do evening work assembling a 7 for a customer, so we had the run of the showroom in the evenings while he was working, playing in the cars. There were 3 rows of three cars, and we worked out that by moving them around a bit we had room to push one about in the middle and get a tyre squeal by letting the clutch up when in gear!
It was all very relaxed, even when the boss saw us, he'd just say 'don't press the accelerators lads' but that was it, and left us to it. I think that would have been Graham Nearn, but can't be sure. Great days! H&S would never allow it now.
So that's it, hence my interest in that car, surprise in it still existing, and wonder where it is today.
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