‘The Lotus Elan must surely rate as the best new sports car of 1962. Chapman's best by far production car to date.”
It's very likely I read the review of the latest creation to emerge from Colin Chapman's Cheshunt factory in the January, 1963, edition of Sports Car Graphic magazine that concluded with those taglines.
It was one of the monthly magic mirrors through which I viewed an exotic automotive world impossibly remote from the Ontario small town I was growing up in. I certainly recall adding the Elan to my expanding sports car wish list.
The Lotus name, despite being around for only a decade, was by then capable of generating in a budding enthusiast's imagination a lust that, if unrequited, often remained latent for years.
About the same time I was falling under the spell of Brit sports cars, the same thing was happening to Iain Thomson in New Zealand.
His family (like mine) had emigrated from Great Britain, Scotland in his case, to a far-away place. But despite its greater distance, New Zealand – not being influenced as Canada was by the proximity of U.S. car makers – retained closer automotive links to “home.” And it was a car-keen country to grow up in, according to Thomson.
