Fast forward to the middle of last year. About June or July of 2007, an ad for a 1987 Esprit Turbo was placed in the Golden Gate Lotus Club newsletter. The GGLC is one of the largest Lotus owners clubs in the world. They run lots of track days, drives, dinners, car show meetups, and general Lotus camaraderie, plus the run the West Coast Lotus Meet. They also provide a lot of technical assistance to owners and wannabe owners world wide. In fact, some of the members of the GGLC were instrumental in me buying my first Espit. The previous owner sent me a video tape tour of the car. I was able to show the tape to a number of GGLC Esprit experts for their evaluation of the car. I would up buying it, partially based on their advice. They also provide a ton of documentation, advice and technical information on their website. That alone is worth the fee for joining. There are a couple of other Lotus resources that we will get to in the next few posts that are worth looking into.
Anyway, back to the ad. The car was described as being in pretty good condition, however the engine had been taken apart. The color of the car as described was one I had never seen on a G-bodied Esprit before, so it sounded kindof interesting, however the price was a little high for a car in it's condition. The ad ran in the newsletter for several months in a row, when I noticed that the price was coming down with each passing ad. Eventually it got to the point where it was an interesting deal.
As you may recall, I started this whole exercise with the idea of putting my later frame under my recently painted '83 Esprit. The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea, because of the chance of wrecking the paint lifting the body off of the old frame. By now, I had gotten the bugs out of the car and it was (and still is) running great. I also decided that I liked the carburetor setup on the car. The induction noise is like no other fuel injected setup, and I am pretty darned good at balancing the carbs. It takes about 20 minutes start to finish to keep them running at their peak. So, I got to thinking that this partially disassembled '87 Esprit would be just the ticket for my project. I could take the old frame of the '87, put in my "new" frame and drive train, sort out all of the bugs, and still drive my '83 - and have no deadlines.
Plus, I'd have a bunch of extra parts that would be handy for the '83 when the cast aluminum pistions finally melted and I'd have to rebuild the engine. Pretty much everything would be useful, even the extra Citroen gearbox. About December of last year, the price finally got down to the point where I called about it.
The car had a bit of a history to it. It seems the seller was an artist (still is, actuall) and had a loft studio in the San Francisco area. There was some extra space in the studio, which he rented out for storage space for cars. Apparently, the owner of this Esprit stored the car in the studio and disappeared. Eventually, the seller wanted to leave the loft and move out of the city. He tried to locate the owner, but was unsuccessful. He went through the process of obtaining a title for the car, as it had been abandoned. He moved the car to his new location and put it back into service.
The engine had some sort of problem - a knock, loss of power, something. He took the car to a trusted mechanic to diagnose the problem. One thing led to another, and the engine was removed from the car and totally dismantled. The mechanic presented a bill for $10,000 to put everything back together. The seller didn't like the sound of that, so he had the parts packed up and the car hauled out to a shed in Petaluma. There the car sat for quite some time before he decided to try and sell it.
Now we come back to the GGLC. I put the word out that I was interested in the car and asked if there was anyone in the area who could check out the car for me. Roy Nakamura volunteered to drive out and take a look. He reported that the car was cosmetically in pretty good shape, including the interior. It was a little dirty after having sat for so long, and the leather had started to stiffen up a bit. Tires all held air, and it seemed complete. There were boxes and boxes of parts stacked behind the car, but time and space didn't allow a complete inventory. Most of the big engine parts seemed to be there. I talked to my wife about it and convinced her it was a Really Good Deal based on the price, Roy's report and the spare parts I would have. Once she agreed, I pulled the trigger and bought the car. I sent out a check and worked out a deal to come pick up the car when the winter weather moved out of the Rockies.
A few months later, my wife and I found ourselves in the area (how convenient, eh?) for a vacation in February, so we took the opportunity to meet the seller and check out the car. I was very pleasantly surprised to find the car to be in better shape than I expected from Roy's description. We still didn't have time to inventory the parts, but there didn't seem to be anything major missing. When we got back home, I started rearranging the barn and making plans for the trip out. Oh - and we took some pictures....
We finally got calendars and passes to align in May for the pickup. My dad, brother and I turned it into a guys week out and drove out to California to pick it up. The trip by itself is worth another blog, as we packed up the pickup and dragged an empty car trailer over 4000 miles there an back again. You can see pictures of the Great Western Roadtrip here:
http://mikegriese.myphotoalbum.com/albums.php
There are a lot more pictures of FrankEnSPRIT there as well.
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