Hi Rob;
I believe the car you have is one of the two that I sold to Pete in France about a year ago. Peter Eckhardt is a friend of mine and who I got the cars from, but he is not really an internet guy. He was in the US Air force in the mid 60's when he picked up the S1 used. I was told that he autocrossed the car extensively during that time. But in the early 70's he blew his motor and bought the S2 as a donor car for the motor. I guess these cars were cheaper to buy than rebuild the motor back then lol.
It was this time he decided to completely disassemble both cars and added the flairs on the S1 and fiberglass in the front bumper. Unfortunately the cars never ran again and sat in his shed for the past 4 decades. Peter was an engineer and actually was responsible for the development and design of the Accusump, so he modified a bunch of stuff on the cars, especially the S1.
The S2 had at one time, been given to another of his friends in attempts to restore it. But after a couple of years, that attempt failed and he took the car back. It was at this time that a lot of the parts went missing, such as the rear brake calipers, oil pan, and steering wheel.
Peter was retired, selling his house and moving to New Hampshire, and got a hold of me to buy the cars from him. I had a pristine 1970 S4 and a 1969 S4 that I was restoring at that time, so pretty much knew my way around these cars. But getting his cars was like an easter egg hunt. The Bodies and frames were in a shed half way up a mountain which was a challenge as there was no roads leading to the shed. When I finally managed to navigate and climb my Tahoe and trailer up there, there was no place to turn around without tipping the car over, so I had to back all the way down. And I had to do it twice lol. Then the parts were all over, a number of sheds on the property, in his garage, livingroom, kitchen, attic, and every other place he could think of to squirrel away the parts for prosperity. It took over 3 months and countless trips to find everything he had. But at the end, all the parts he had was collected.
I tried doing an inventory, but there were boxes and boxes of parts. He had everything disassembled, and mixed together. I would find tail lamp parts in several different boxes including things like the lenses, bezels, and even screws all scattered about with absolutely no attempt at any kind of organization. Pete from France caught me a good day and sold both cars to him, as I had 3 other restorations going on not including these Elans. Would had kept them, but just had no more space.
Hopefully this gives some background on the cars, but if you have any other questions let me know and I'll find out for you. My email is
[email protected] Cheers Allan PS if you find a round piece of metal stuck on the bottom of the frame, that's mine, it was from my hydraulic jack which I had to use to position the car on to the transport trailer lol.
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:10 am