Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

For a long time I've known that a left hand drive 2nd hand Anglia was used as the road going test-bed for development of the Twincam engine in 1962, but have never seen a photo of the car...until now.

A friend is building a replica, and on another forum asked if anybody had any information about the car. I gave him the registration number, 335 AXY, and a while later, a chap came forward saying that his father had a photo of the car somewhere...and he dug it out.

Here it is! Built in January 1962 with a Twincam engine and discs on the front, and few other modifications apparently. It hit the road in February and completed 400 miles that month without failure.

Famously, Jim Clark used the car on many occasions, frequently popping back home to Duns in the car and frightening a lot of large, high performance cars in the process. Steve Sanville drove the car down to the Weber plant in Bologna, Italy, to get the carburettor setup evaluated and tweaked!

In all the car completed 20,000 miles, and once the Elan and Lotus Cortina were in production, it was sold off as a 'Lotus Anglia'. I wonder what became of this, the ultimate 'Q' car of the era!

Attached is also a small write-up from Ford Times in February 1963, with Jim Clark reflecting on driving the Anglia.

Mark Kempson

Mark

This is a great story and I have always wondered what happened to the car.

I was intrigued and in doing a quick search on Ecosia, I came up with this article from last year which not about the prototype but someone's interpretation that was for sale last year:

https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-spo ... sale/45515

Andrew

Great photo Mark. Looks like Cedric Selzer with the type 25.

Exact year and colour of my first car, dang….
Oh to be 14 years old, and have a paper route only 30km from an auto wrecker. $200 was a year savings

I think that image confirms it was a Left hand Drive car.

I would have thought you could trace the car via the registration shown in the photo ?

If making a replica you need to find one of the prototype heads with the thermostat on the inlet side which the car would have had I believe. There are a couple of them around in the hads of people on this forum that i have seen photos of.

cheers
Rohan

Nice one Mark!

Good find Mark! I bet Lotus didn’t have all the DVLA stuff we get today with fitting a non standard engine to a production car…!
Malcolm

It looks as if the Anglia was on standard wheels.

From memory the Anglia had been bought by Lotus from the Belgian embassy.

My sister's first car was an Anglia, in red. I recall borrowing it for a week and being impressed with the ride and handling, coming from Minis.

Great info, thank you, Mark.

Tim

Elanintheforest wrote:I wonder what became of this, the ultimate 'Q' car of the era!

Prob'ly right next to the Lotus Mk I in some Japanese collector's secret vault!

When I lived on the Isle of Wight at Ventnor in the late 60s I was driving down the hill ( ventnor s on the side of a hill down to the sea ) when I came across a maroon anglia estate doing a 3 point turn in the middle of the road so I stopped and waited he pulled up beside me and said “ sorry old boy “. It was Colin chapman . Len