Chevy 350-Powered Lotus Elite Fails To Dominate Race, Nobody Shocked

by Murilee Martin

Published: December 13th, 2011

chevy 350 powered lotus elite fails to dominate race nobody shocked

On paper, a super-lightweight Lotus with a genuine ’68 Corvette 350 and Muncie 4-speed ought to eat up a road course; just go onto any online forum full of self-proclaimed car experts and they’ll tell you exactly that. Reality, on the other hand… well, reality doesn’t always live up to the expectations of internet car experts.

24 Hours of LeMons aficionados have seen this played out many times (e.g., the terrible LeMons C4 Corvette and the even more terrible LeMons Subaru SVX), and so we all took a deep breath when we saw the B-Team’s engine-swapped Lotus Elite at the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza BS Inspection.

The B-Team goes pretty far back in LeMons history. They showed up for their first race in early 2009 with the type of car that bores LeMons organizers the most ( BMW E30) and the 11th version of a way-overdone TV-show-based theme.

However, they executed their theme— unoriginal as it was— quite well, and they were reasonably clean drivers. We became accustomed to the B-Team as veteran, usually hassle-free regulars in the West Coast LeMons Region.

Then, early in 2010, they showed up to a race with a top-notch new theme: the Pussy Wagën from Kill Bill, complete with costumes. Since my street name is Phil— dating back to my days as “Warlord” for the East Side Alameda Locos— they called their team “Kill Phil.”

I liked the B-Team’s new look so much that I hung their portrait in my office, right next to the extra-unsavory LBJ campaign poster and behind the illuminated Opel Manta Leuchtbild. But still, much as I like this team, they were racing a Bavarian Boredomwagen.

Until weekend before last, that is. Sometime between the end of the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 500 at Infineon and the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza, the B-Team acquired an Elite into which some mid-70s mechanical genius had stuffed an allegedly Corvette-sourced 350 small-block and Muncie 4-speed. They managed to get a LeMons-legal cage into the thing (which is no small feat, given that the Elite has about as much substance as a gingerbread house), but they didn’t have time to get it, you know, running prior to the race.

Engines that sit for decades often don’t work so well when revived, and the small-block Chevy turns out to be particularly ill-suited to all-weekend-long road-race abuse. By the morning before the race, the B-Team had managed to get the “Chotus’s” engine fired up, sort of. All that oil smoke wasn’t a good sign, but they persevered.

They tried to take it out onto the track for some Friday prerace practice, but the car crapped out after a few hundred yards. No problem, though— that’s what all-night wrenching sessions are for!

Saturday morning came, and the green flag waved. Where’s the Chotus? Finally, the car clattered onto the track around noon. Hmmm… is it supposed to smoke that bad?

No, it’s not.

So, back to the pits for some more work.

To their credit, nobody on the B-Team was heard mentioning comparisons between the Chotus and their E30, in spite of the fact that the Pussy Wagën had been a consistent top-ten contender.

The engine was burning oil out of one bank while under load, which many paddock bystanders (myself included) told the B-Teamers was fairly strong evidence for bad oil rings on at least one piston on that side of the engine. However, the B-Team decided that the problem must be a bad intake-manifold gasket.

You know what? They were right! Once they fixed the gasket (and the distributor, and the carburetor, and the fuel pump, and probably several dozen other things), they managed to get the car onto the track on Sunday, knocking out a not-so-bad 68 total laps.

That was good enough for 117th overall (out of 131 entries), and the invented-for-the-occasion Least From The Most trophy (not to mention slam-dunk Legends of LeMons status, whenever I get around to doing the 2011 awards). You can read the B-Team’s story in their own words here. Good work, B-Team!

#24HoursOfLeMons #24HoursOfLeMonsButtonwillow #ArseFreeze-a-Palooza #ChevySmallBlock #EngineSwap #Lotus #LotusElite #Racing

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments

Join the conversation

2 of 34 comments

Zackman on Dec 14, 2011

I'm sorry, but after looking at this Lotus for a day or two, all I can come up with is that is one ugly car. Phooey.

Like Reply
Safe as milk on Dec 14, 2011

you have an office?

Like Reply

Recent Comments

Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Off-road fluff on vehicles that should not be off road needs to die.
Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Saw this posted on social media; “Just bought a 2023 Tundra with the 14" screen. Let my son borrow it for the afternoon, he connected his phone to listen to his iTunes.The next day my insurance company raised my rates and added my son to my policy. The email said that a private company showed that my son drove the vehicle. He already had his own vehicle that he was insuring.My insurance company demanded he give all his insurance info and some private info for proof. He declined for privacy reasons and my insurance cancelled my policy.These new vehicles with their tech are on condition that we give up our privacy to enter their world. It's not worth it people.”
TheEndlessEnigma Poor planning here, dropping a Vinfast dealer in Pensacola FL is just not going to work. I love Pensacola and that part of the Gulf Coast, but that area is by no means an EV adoption demographic.
Keith Most of the stanced VAGS with roof racks are nuisance drivers in my area. Very likely this one's been driven hard. And that silly roof rack is extra $'s, likely at full retail lol. Reminds me of the guys back in the late 20th century would put in their ads that the installed aftermarket stereo would be a negotiated extra. Were they going to go find and reinstall that old Delco if you didn't want the Kraco/Jenson set up they hacked in?