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lotus 11 kit car

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TypeRboy

TypeRboy

Jedi Warrior
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I must be nuts. I have been looking at sites for these cars, and am thinking of doing one. Do any of you have any experience with building these of owning one? Better yet do any of you know of one for sale, preferably incomplete ( yea like you wouldn't have picked it up yourselves..)

What kind of pricing have you folks come across? ( prices are almost never listed on the sites for these beasts..)
 
Champion Motor Cars makes an 11 body to fit over a "Locost" chassis. There website is hopelessly dated but they had the body cost at $2000US (https://www.championmotorcars.com/store3.htm)

I believe there were sold Eleven kits sold over here in the 80s - by Westfield - you might be able to track one down. Apparently only 150 made according to this - https://www.open.org/~joerger/westfield.html?menu

here is an article from R&T's Peter Egan on building one

https://www.open.org/joerger/crate.html



https://www.championmotorcars.com/eleven.htm
 
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We had a real one at one of our events this Summer. Very neat!


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My father owned a real Eleven - it had been a factory team car at Le Mans in 1957 - and offered it to me for road use if I could get it legal. Naturally I leapt at the chance but quickly realized there was no hope. Ground clearance was probably the biggest problem. We couldn't get it out of our driveway because it was too low with about 2.5 inches of clearance. There were numerous other showstoppers as well. I have a few pictures at
https://www.coldplugs.com/lotuseleven1.htm .

I've looked at a few Westfields and the like and they seem far more practical for the road. The ones I've seen for sale have been under $20K. I think they're too low to be considered safe these days but they'd sure be fun.
 
One of my father's most notorious driving moments was spinning-out in his friend's XI at Shelton Raceway. It had the DeDion rear-end, and as he came around the curve, it just came loose -- he wound up spinning towards the outfield grass...as he went off the track, he bottomed-out on the dirt and pinched a fuel line.

...seconds later -- poof -FIRE!!!

I took my Dad to the vintage races this summer with the owner of that Eleven, and Ron still makes jokes about my Dad's driving. (Such as "you're old man picked me up and drove us down to the track...surprisingly we made it!" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I LOVE the XI, and there are a bunch of real ones here in the Northwest.
 
Those early Lotus 11s (and 9s) look like they have "fender skirts" on the front wheels. The body above is an obvious replica, since it's made for left-hand steering wheel. Either way, you gotta love those old front-engine sports racers.
11s look neat in an "old school aero" sort of way, but I like the more open-wheel appearance of the mid-engine Lotus 23. Here's the nose of a 23 that I took at Lime Rock last Fall.

lotus_nose.jpg


[edit]Here's an entire Lotus 23
sml_lotus_23.jpg
 
I've never been an 11 fan, but I think that one of the race cars that I have most thoroughly enjoyed driving was a 23B.
Jeff
 
I tested several Westfields before I bought my 7 (Birkin). Cool cars, neat looking. I went for the 7 instead of an 11 that was available for sale here because I could not fit wider tires to one and I really wanted one for autocrossing and track duty.
 
beware of westfield 11's in the eastern usa. there are several that were built in NJ by a gent who sold them as westfields, ask for paperwork unless you dont care. He had made his own molds and chassis jig

after NOT delivering our lotus 7 project for several years and NOT returning our payment a deal was struck for all his remaining 11 parts, molds (yes i said molds!), chassis and aluminum. we built one car and sold the remaining stuff to someone in Florida about 6 years ago. (not anyone who's out there doing stuff now)
 
Yes I imagine the pitfalls are many. Even some of the better and popular kit cars can be a nightmare to piece together. I'll keep my eyes open, but after the trouble i'm having with my BDA I think my wife will divorce me if I start another project until it's done.
 
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