As a teenage schoolboy in the late 60's, I dreamed of owning 'a driving machine' ­ not as most school kid's at that time did of a 'E' type or Aston, but of a basic, uncivilised & unsociable plastic bodied machine, namely the Lotus 7. Having first eyed this machine via the 'Prisoner' TV series, from my perspective it looked super-cool, my friends hated them and always tried talking me out of it by calling it 'a Tank' [can't see the similarity, can you?] however in my eyes it's performance was awe inspiring, for the late 60's a 0-60 time of 7 seconds for the 1500 Cosworth version, was stupidly quick, [even today this time still cuts the mustard] when other affordable 'performance' cars from that era could manage only 10-11 seconds [Mini Cooper 'S', Escort Mexico]. During my job as a newspaper delivery boy I'd scour the press and magazine for articles on it's performance prowess, steadily over the next few years I built up a 'Data' file of these 'cut out' articles, and every time I needed inspiration I avidly read and re-read them.

After I'd left school and started working full-time the dream still existed, now closer to fruition than ever, I dutifully passed my driving test, however there was an obstacle to owning my 'Tank' namely my lack of Green-stuff, my family were poor and unable to help. Over the next couple of years I'd often return to the Data-file, re-read it and dream on, the biggest obstacle to owning one had now become Insurance, the tank was in group 7, at the time the top insurance group and insurance would cost me £400 or thereabouts, and to buy a tank £500+, not having a rich dad it was difficult, my income at the time was between £12-15/week depending on overtime, Nevertheless my enthusiasm was undiminished, I regularly added to 'Tank's' Data-file, one day my dream became a big step closer, I read a small article about 'Lotus's recently introduced 'owners' insurance scheme, I wrote off for a quote, it came back - £32 for 3 months!!! Wow, I could live with that figure. From that day on I knew my dream was about to be realised, at the time I owned a '66 Mini Cooper 1275'S' which had to be got rid of as efficiently as possible, i.e. Whichever way made me the most Shekels, the 'S' became my first car strip-down, the value of it's parts far exceeding the sum for the whole car, I'd paid £350 for it, and after 18 months use I managed to sell £517 worth of bits off it in the month I gave myself to do so. I still have the original 'S' 'Green' log book with it's original only 4 careful owners [myself included], which I guess today is probably valued at the cost of reasonable holiday!!