And now for something completely different...

[Bud English]

Rebuilt and re-motored. Looks like someone spent quite a bit of time and money on this. It appears very nicely done. I'll bet it's a handful to drive.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lotus-Other-cou ... 1866499898

[el-saturn]

lovely car, BUT sure doesn't remind me of my europa JPS TC i had in the 90's: bought it for 1k? with 15k miles on the clock ---------- with a much bigger BUT however! sandy 36 4982

[elansprint71]

Interesting idea! I can't envisage the gear linkage and I bet it gets hot in that engine room!

[The Veg]

I used to have a 2002 VW GTI with that engine (VW call it the AWP), which in original specification makes 'only' 180 hp...still plenty-enough to have a lot of fun in the 3000-lb GTI, probably mostly due to the gearing. I liked that engine a lot until it started getting old, and I started getting really tired of some of the maintenance tasks. The cambelt was a bitch and a half to renew, the thermostat incredibly difficult to access, the cooling-system fittings all made of some type of black plastic the looked really good until it inevitably developed microcracks along the mold-parting lines, and breather plumbing that was not very durable but was very expensive to renew (I opted instead to plumb it myself from other materials...the result looked quite 'ghetto' but was 1/10 the price of VW's parts and was at least 10X more durable). That engine is also very sensitive to sludge, as it uses oil-pressure to actuate the variable timing of one of the camshafts. Once the engine had more than 100K miles on it coil-packs blew often enough that at one point I kept a spare onboard. It's now been about three years since my AWP finally ate its cambelt at 156K miles, which with a 20-valve 'interference' head means death. I don't miss it.

What's my point? For the kind of money the seller wants, I'd expect much better than a crappy VW engine!