4/5/08 - Cleaning my garage space, and removing some donor parts

The past week was a wild one in terms of me and Sevens... but let's rewind a little bit. About 6 years ago, I discovered Ron Champion's book, Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as 250 UKpounds and Race It! With a title like that, how could I go wrong? It was purchased, read, drooled over, re-read, fantasized about, and obsessed over. Note that none of this energy actually leads to a running, driving car. During this time, a donor (1981 Toyota Celica) was purchased, moved during a house move, and sold without any sports car being built. Other cars of interest I owned during this time include an '88 Supra Turbo, a '68 Mustang GT/CS, an '86 MR2, an '88 MR2 Supercharged, a Dodge SRT-4, a '69 Mercury Cougar XR7 convertible, a '97 Z3, an '02 SVT Focus, a '92 Miata, a '92 Suzuki Swift GT, and an '07 WRX (that's the daily driver now). So it's not like there is or has been a lack of interesting transportation... but they're not a Seven, and they weren't built by me. Strangely, once I became posessed of the notion that it is possible to build your own car, it became something I had to do. A life goal, if you will.

So here we are. Finally I have a little money in my pocket, a clear garage spot (though I used to have a 960 sq. ft. shop at our previous home, I failed to take advantage of that), and far more mechanical aptitude and understanding than when I first got The Book in the mail 6 years ago. What I have less of is time. What a Seven needs is time. It is possible to build a Seven for next to nothing if you have a lot of time. Since I don't, I will be "buying time" by buying pre-built components where possible. With this in mind, I was perusing the various Lotus and Seven haunts last weekend. I chased a lead on a wrecked Birkin S3 (one of the well-known Seven clones), but ended up letting that one go for various reasons. No sooner had I sent the seller of that wrecked car the Dear John email, but a private message notification appeared in my inbox, informing me of a message waiting at locostusa.com. Within minutes, I was buying a car. Well, the start of one anyway -- and a very good start at that: TIG welded chassis, completed front and rear A-arms, and full Miata running gear. A builder from Nebraska decided that he didn't have the time to finish his Seven project, and would rather have a nice, complete Miata sitting in the drive instead. He may be the smarter man -- we'll see. All I know is that I'm very excited. Expected shipping date: 4/14.