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Banks Service Station |
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Classic & Sportscar magazine
The following article featured in the November 1992 edition of Classic and
Sportscar magazine and is reproduced by kind permission.
All text and images © Classic and Sportscar 1992. All rights reserved
Lancashire hot shotCan a Lotus Europa, one of Colin Chapman's fabled but
fragile
This is a struggle to get into, worrying to drive unaided in traffic and almost impossible to see out of to reverse. The ultra-thin body means it's really too fragile to be used much on the road, you don't want to lean on it, and for the same reason it can't carry much luggage. But it has to be the most unstickable car I've ever driven, one of Colin Chapman's racers for the road. It's a Series 2 Europa that really works, thanks to diligent sorting by its owner Andrew Short, who's connected with that mecca for Europa owners, Banks Service Station in Southport, Lancashire. It's unique, in fact: the Series 2 chassis wears a Lotus 47 (Europa-based racer) bodyshell, is powered by an overbored and tuned Renault crossflow engine, and, even though these bits were never meant to live together, is supposed to have been built this way in 1971 — although the factory denies all knowledge. Most likely, it was a pile of bits that could be built into a complete car, so out the door it went to make a few more pounds. We — Mick Walsh and I — are in Lancashire to find out about this underrated car. The Europa is the Cinderella of Chapman's post-Seven Lotuses, and purists say the later Twin Cam is the only acceptable version. We want to find out if it could provide acceptable touring transport while we discover what the county has to offer.
Short puts off handing over his precious baby while he shows us around the premises. In the workshop Richard Winter, who owns Banks, and Roger Aughton are working out how the ancillaries of a 2-litre Astra engine ("cheap power") will fit into the back of one of their replacement Europa chassis. These are made of box tube, stiffened by glued and riveted alloy sheet, and reckoned to be straighter than the Lotus original. The chassis sit on their own tubular wishbones and, at the front, the chassis wears their ventilated front disc conversion.
Elsewhere, there are more treasures. Three more Banks Europa chassis lean against the wall and, in a secondary workshop, what looks like a trio of Lotus 62s are actually wide-bodied 47s, moulded to Richard Winter's own design. Two are customer cars (one shell is destined for the Astra-engined chassis next door), and one is Winter's. It will come out with a twin-turbo AlfaV6, using air-conditioning units as inter-coolers. The reasoning behind it is simple, explains Winter: "We want something you can give a good seeing-to without having to rebuild it every week."
Andrew Short runs BSS Spares across the yard, a separate company from Banks, "but if we've something to develop, we do it together." His day-to-day road car is a Citroen Dyane, with a mid-mounted, turbocharged Alfasud engine and Lotus front suspension, that Richard Winter built a couple of years ago. Who needs a Renault Turbo 2?
Inside Short's office is a Lotus 61 Formula Ford racer and Winter's 1200cc Triumph Trophy motorcycle, while outside among the dead Europa shells and one brand-new one for an Elan sits the makings of a mechanic's llOOcc Suzuki drag bike project. Petrol-heads, the lot of them. Back on planet earth, we switch to credit card and toothbrush mode. Short runs the car without a rear luggage bin, as this hangs from the rear body and might crack the fragile glassfibre. There's enough room for a fat briefcase up front, and that's all. Luckily, on this car, there's no room for a matching spare wheel, so a little more storage is liberated that way. Trouble is, you can't put much in there because it would get in the way of the minimal radiator. Andrew reluctantly hands over his protege and we head for the coast. The gearchange is heavy: the detents have been adjusted to make reverse near-impossible to select (for sprinting) and it's easy to hit fourth instead of second at first, but the Fuego 'box ratios suit the car well, with a very small gap between fourth and fifth. In top and with fatter tyres than standard, this Europa is still low-geared, needing 3250rpm for 70mph. The early four-Classic and Sportscar, November 1992
speeders, with only 82bhp, needed the lowest gearing they could get, but with only four cogs and skinny 155-section tyres they must have been horribly frantic at times. Ride's pretty good in this well-sorted car. It i wears uprated springs from standard all ' round - 851b in at the rear, 100s at the front. But it's never too uncomfortable, just jiggly Until you ground it, that is. Two-up with camera gear was perhaps a bit much for it. It sounds much worse than it really is, although you never remember that the 2in stone you're just about to drive over painlessly will actually contact the underbelly.
Strangely for such a front-light car, the steering feels dead, although it's not heavy Front tyres 30mm wider than standard may be die clue - and that Short likes to run the car with little castor. Still, it doesn't wander about or tram-line under braking, and the owner says it's rock-steady at 130mph
First stop is Cockerham Sands, in the shadow of Heysham nuclear power station. Despite the proximity of this potential health hazard, locals are exercising their donkeys, their motorbikes and themselves. One interested party drove closely past us in his Panda, which later disgorges a radio-controlled helicopter. One soul even plays Timo Makinens on the sands with his Reliant Robin. It's too painful to watch. It's windy on the sands and we find the Europa's doors don't have check straps, so they hit the door pillars which chips the paint. Thanks, Colin... Glasson Dock: a dead end. But we pull up at some heavy-metal noses poking out from Ship Road Autos. While Chaz and Mal examine the Europa, we check their stock: a '58 Caddy for &5000, a four-speed manual 383cu in Plymouth Roadrunner (registered 'GBH') for &6995, or a Russian Ural motorcycle. One of them rides a Suzuki motocrosser with lights on the road, but I don't like to ask who in case he offers a ride; some years ago I found that dirt bikes and roads don't mix...
Next we elect to hit Lancaster, to pick up tourist guides and work out where to go next. In the Lotus you can forget the handbrake, and in the hills around town you leam to be thankful for die well-placed pedals. My engineer's boots, despite not being standard Lotus wear, are just right for rolling off the brake and on to the throttle while holding the car on a hill. You want to avoid touching the car behind with a 47 shell... Big boots are also in order to make the thing stop. Andrew Short runs the car widiout a brake servo: "It was an optional extra, but just about all cars had them," which results in a lovely firm pedal and fade-free anchors, but you do have to lean on them very hard.
We burble on up to Steamtown, in Cam-forth, further north, because I like big engineering and Mick likes locomotives. We're lucky: the fabulous Sir Nigel Gresley is being steamed up as we get mere, ready for a run over to Derby the next day. This fabulous streamlined 4-6-2 class A4 Pacific is named after its designer, and first went into service with the then London North Eastern Railways in 1936. One of its 34 sisters is probably better known - the Mallard, which from 1938 has held die record at 126mph as the UK's fastest passenger-pulling steam loco. In die shed we find The Flying Scotsman, possibly the most famous engine in the
world. It clearly hadn't run for a while. In the back of the shed, there are a massive pair: a La France, built in 1914, and, looking almost identical, a colossal German Schwarzkopf loco, built in 1938 and used to pull Hitler's personal train, The shell-scarred tender carries 38 cu metres of water (that's 38 tonnes, as big as the biggest fully-laden lorries allowed in Britain!) and carries 13 cu metres of oil. But somebody had seen fit to hang on these noble engines ridiculous Thomas the Tank Engine faces. All in the name of marketing, no doubt, but sacrilege all the same. Still, time to get fed and watered for the night, which means a blast through the Trough of Bowland in the middle of the Lancashire moors. This road, flat, empty and winding through miles of bends, is perfect Europa country. It's a cliche, but the lithe little road racer really does string series of bends together fluidly, and we're able to maintain a high average even though limited to 5000rpm. Despite the lifeless steering, the thing refuses to budge, roll or drift - it just goes round, and Andrew Short is right when he says that, if you did lose it on the road, you would have a very serious accident because by that time you would be going very fast indeed. Even if you unexpectedly arrive at a tighter corner than you anticipate (because the Europa is so low you can't read the road ahead very well) you just twitch your wrists and round it goes. Only once do I find the edge of the grip, and that's on an uphill dipping kink, when the Europa goes a little understeery for about two yards - and then doesn't budge off its line.
Processing a later bend repeatedly for Mick's cornering shots, I am able to go harder each time - and the Europa shows no sign of losing its composure. Strangely, it never overheated or boiled, as you'd expect a Lotus, an old Lotus, to. The electric fan hardly ever kicked in, although there's an override switch for the nervous. Chapman organised the air to enter the front of the car, go through the radiator and out through the right-hand wheelarch, so maybe his ideas did work after all. The other part of this brilliant plan isn't quite so good. More air from the front grille opening is sucked into a sealed plenum chamber, and then on to the fresh air vents. Although the supply's good for a sixties design, the fatal flaw is that this plenum chamber also contains the luggage. Fresh socks or fresh air? The choice is yours. Our overnight stop was at the Inn at Whitewell. Whitewefl consists of The Inn and a chapel: the nearest other habitation is five miles away. The rooms are beautifully characterful (all slightly different, I suspect), the food's good, (the bar menu was good enough for us), the ale's brill and the owner runs a Citroen HY 'corrugated iron' van converted into a minibus to ferry guests on shooting forays. Oddly, the walls of the gents' are papered with, well, seventies tits, torn from suitable newspapers, and then lacquered. And only £59 per night for a twin room. More pictures the next day, before we brim the tank. The tweaked Renault engine, bored out to l604cc and with a Lotus big-valve head, will only tolerate super unleaded and, despite being caned through the gears, sipped fuel at only a gallon every 26 miles. Maybe the car's light weight helps, or maybe it isn't working hard; we feel it does its best work far in excess of our 5000rpm limit. It's so tractable in fact, that Andrew Short plans to fit a wilder cam this winter, reckoning he won't miss a little of the generous flexibility. Last stop, on our way back to Southport: the British Commercial Vehicle Museum in Leyland, for some more big engineering. Inside, among treasures such as a 100-ton chain-drive Scammell heavy hauler and a rare Beardmore artic we discover the 'Popemo-bile', built on a six-wheeler Leyland chassis for the man's visit to the UK some years ago. Always wondered what happened to it... Elsewhere, you can see the Ford Supervan 2, basically a Transit lookalike glassfibre shell slipped over the chassis of a redundant Ford DFV-powered C100 Group C racer. When we leave, two of the museum's staff are hosing down the brick paving outside - with a vintage Thomycroft fire engine. Marvellous.
Back at the ranch, Winter and Aughton had got a little further with their project and we get a chance to debate originality: Short's Europa isn't strictly original, with its rear chin spoiler, 7in Minilite-copy alloys and a five-speed 'box. But it's usable and, had the appropriate parts been available when the car was current, Chapman probably would have used them too. I believe in an owner carrying out sympathetic development if it's in keeping. We would rather do without that rear spoiler, although the craftsmanship is faultless. But as Andrew Short says: "Nobody can tell me what is and isn't right for this car." His mods have meant that the car can be used for serious transport, and not kept as a museum piece, for gentle trips on Sundays only. The men at Banks are adamant that they can improve on Chapman's original - "if you bring one to us, at least it'll go straight, not like the original" - and even Roger Aughton's absolutely standard-looking yellow S2 has a tuned engine and five-speed box. If, like him, I took the car to the south of France every year, I'd be very glad.
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