originally written for "Terlingua Thangs"

It's an old story. Boy falls for girl. Girl dumps boy. Boy buys hot rod. It was 1967, I was 21, and I decided I could get out of the dumps if only my Mark I Sprite (bugeye) had more horsepower. I went to Lotus SouthWest in Dallas with the intention to buy a Lotus Twincam motor to replace the anemic 948 cc BMC in the Sprite. I talked to Joe Starkey there. (I didn't know it at the time, but he was a serious racer. He was often on the track with the likes of Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Mark Donahue, and Dick Thompson and some guy named Jerry Titus who drove Shelby Mustangs.) Joe convinced me that it would cost at least two grand for the Lotus motor, but that he knew where I could get a Lotus Seven for $1,600. Way cool! I had only seen photos of this legendary car, but I knew it was the car for me. The next thing I know, I'm at Joe's house (lotsa race trophies there). We hop into his Lotus Elan and head out to see the Seven. (He drove like a race car driver. Way cool, again!)

The story was that the Seven had been bought for racing, but then the owner never got around to using the car and he put it in storage. We opened a creaky old garage door and there it was: covered with dirt and cobwebs, the tires were flat, the battery was dead. We scraped some of the dirt off, and I wiggled into the driver's seat. Joe said that the car would clean up like new and that it ran like a bat outa hell. After 10 or 15 seconds of careful reflection, I said, "I'll take it." That probably wasn't very rational, but you know how it is with love at first sight.

Two days later, I showed up at Lotus Southwest with cash in hand. I walked into the garage. Oh, yeah. There it was: a gleaming black 1962 Lotus Seven America. It was right hand drive, so Joe took me for a quick driving lesson to be sure I didn't cut corners on turns and to work out the kinks of shifting with my left hand. He handed me the keys and I hit the streets. I made it almost 10 miles before I was pulled over by the police. I was driving carefully (honest), but there was no front license plate on the car.

That is when I learned that driving a race car on the street attracts a lot of attention. Police notwithstanding, that's a good thing. The cool factor of driving such an outrageous car is enormous. When I left the theater after seeing the movie "Grand Prix", I had to push through a crowd to get to my Lotus Seven in the parking lot. That was a sweet moment. My buddies all drove muscle cars including a Road Runner, a 442, and a Grand Prix, but I was the guy with the "real race car". All the smokers loved being a passenger so that they use the side exhaust for a cigarette lighter. Women? Yes, they liked it, too. Lots of cool factor.

The reality? "Seven America" is code for "948 cc BMC motor". Yep, I was driving a nifty chassis, but it was powered by the same tractor motor that was in my Sprite. Thanks to low gears and light weight, the car was a rocket ship up to 45 mph, but that was the end of the go. I could grab rubber in all four gears, but that was because nobody (except for Jim Hall perhaps?) knew about down force yet. I'm positive that the front fenders were called wings because they were so useful in ensuring that you would be airborne at 70 mph. I wore knee high moccasins in the summer to protect my leg from the heat of the transmission. A June bug at 60 mph could knock you silly. I cultivated friends who could weld because something was always falling off: headlamps, gas tank, exhaust system, frame bracing, motor mount (yikes!). Rain wasn't too bad because the water drained through the holes in the floor. I drove it to the Midwest in February 1970 and survived the cold only by wearing all of my clothes at the same time.

My guess is that most Lotus Sevens are driven on weekends and on the track, but I put 80,000 miles on that poor car in less than four years. I frequented Lotus Southwest for parts, and the guys there were always amazed that the car had not simply disintegrated. Thanks to two burned pistons, I ended the winter Midwest trip by driving 48 hours straight at 30 mph to get home to Texas. I slept 24 hours, replaced the pistons, drove the car to Joe Starkey's car lot, and sold it to him for $1,200. That was the end of an era for me, but all these years later I still pull out a Lotus anecdote on a moment's notice. "I remember when" I'd love to find that car again. My fuzzy memory says that the chassis number was 1415 (or was it 1514 or 1512 or ? maybe it was a 1960 model and the number was 1215?). If anyone knows anything about it, let me know.

The Terlingua Connection

Not long after I bought the car in '67, I discovered the Terlingua Racing Team. Being a true Texan, I joined immediately. Look closely at the photo, and you can see the TRT sticker. It added significantly to the "cool factor". I loved being able to legitimately say that I was connected to the likes of Carroll Shelby. Plus, TRT members were part of a group of good guy racers who were trying to start a boys school.

Fast forward through hippie years, life as a soccer dad, and kids in college. I'm still broke, but the dreams of cool cars are still alive. My son and I frequent the rod and custom shows. I'm at the race track at every opportunity. We have a busy 1/4 mile dirt track in Merced. It's only a few hours to Sears Point ­ oops, I mean Infineon. We were at the ALMS race there in summer 2004 where Dale, Jr. went up in flames ­ literally. I saw his dad drive at the Brickyard. "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday." Guess what? That really works, which explains the black Monte Carlo SS in the driveway. I'm delighted that the TRT is back. I have a feeling that Intimidator would grin to see the TRT sticker on the side of one of his cars.

OK, here's the rest of the story. As you can tell from the article I prepared for "Terlingua Thangs", I put a lot of rough miles on my poor old Seven. It was beautiful when it was all black, but those miles pretty much destroyed the finish. Texas back-road gravel ate away at the nose and the fenders. The bonnet latches came loose one day, and the bonnet went flying at 70 mph. After three years of those conditions, there wasn't much original paint left on the car.

Being basically broke, there was little I could do. However, I discovered a cheap blue spray paint that came in cans. My inspired vision being greater than my connection to reality, I removed the fenders and stripped the paint from the aluminum skin. Then I painted the fenders and nose with the spray cans. Then my life got really complicated before I could come up with enough money to paint the skin. I put the fenders back on and hit the road. If you look closely, you might notice some free hand painting on the aluminum. My good friend Juan Alvarez, who is an artist, helped me decorate the car a la Merry Pranksters, "everybody on the bus." (It was 1969. If you were there, then this all makes sense.)

I pretty much lived out of the car for four or five months and relied on various friends for crash pad services. The last major trip was from Dallas, Texas to Dayton, Ohio and then to Bloomington, Indiana. (Yes, there was a girl friend in those northern states to provide inspiration.) During the drive from Dayton to Bloomington, I got caught in a winter storm. Knowing no one when I arrived in Bloomington, I took shelter in a movie theater for most of a day until my friend was scheduled to arrive in town. When I left the theater, the Lotus was full of snow. The next day, I put on all of my clothes (three pairs of socks, two pairs of jeans, and a cloth laundry bag over my left leg) and headed south, swearing that I would never go north again. (Ironic twist: in 1984 I was hired by Indiana University and ended up living in Bloomington, which turned out to be a lovely town.) As I drove off that day, I noticed that the motor seemed to be missing a bit. By the time I stopped for gas, it was misfiring a lot. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, and to make matters worse it did not want to restart. I finally got it going by almost flooding the motor, but it would not rev over 2,500 without shutting down. Slowly it dawned on me that I had a burned piston (it turned out to be two). I had no money. It was a good bet that nobody in wherever I was would happen to have some BMC 948 cc pistons sitting around. I couldn't abandon the car with the hope of returning to do the repair (no money, remember?). So, I choked it, fired it up, and began the very long drive to Texas at 2,500 rpm. I decided that if the motor died it would never start again, so I kept it running every time I bought gas and I drove it non-stop to Dallas. When I got to Dallas, I shut it down, slept for 24 hours, replaced the two pistons when I woke up, scrubbed off the wacko hippy paint job, and drove it straight to Joe Starkey's car lot. He had mercy on me and bought the car back from me. I walked away with a few dollars in my pocket, and the next chapter of my life opened to a series of hitch hiking adventures.

All's well that ends well. I've since raised a happy family, and I have a wonderful career in academics. I currently am the Founding University Librarian at the University of California, Merced, so it looks like I still have a propensity for adventure.

I sure would like to have another Lotus Seven, though.

Contact Bruce Miller<bmiller@ucmerced.edu>