Westfield Elevens

Everybody who knows about the Westfield Eleven knows the two Road & Track articles motoring journalist Peter Egan wrote in the early eighties.
The first article discribes the build and the second a cross country trip from Newport Beach (California) to Elkhart Lake (Wisconsin).
Peter Egan's Eleven may be the most famous Westfield Eleven in the world, and many of you may wonder what happened to that car.

The car is alive and well and resides now in the Haynes International Motormuseum (http://www.haynesmotormuseum.com/home.php) in Sparkford, Yeovil, Somerset, Great Britain.
I have several pictures of this car and I wll post them soon.

Wow - we are driving museum pieces already! Must try to remember that!

I made these pictures in 2008

....

Nice looking car, mine is almost a carbon copy with the same "go-faster" stripes

1964 Lotus 11 Westfield ??

Apologies, because I never read the R&T article, but which bit is 1964? Was it a pre-MkIII Midget donor?

stephen

Stephen, enjoy reading!

http://members.toast.net/joerger/crate.html

http://members.toast.net/joerger/north.html

Here are the production details for the Midget and Sprite
http://www.bmh-ltd.com/midgetparts.htm

Evidently, the license plate is from the donor car, which is why it is dated "1964". At the time the car was built, it was common practice in California to register a kit car using the donor car's registration and chassis number. BMC A engines don't really carry a permanent chassis number, so it is easy to substitute a 1275. Anyway, nobody cared back then.

Unlike the draconian motor inspection rules of the UK, it is quite a bit easier to register a kit car in California if you know how to do it. Egan's car was simply registered as the donor car, it is was not likely that there were any inspections at all.

My personal W11 was registered that way (as a '65 Austin) about the same time as Egan's car here in California.