Any Swiss around? Help needed! Racing Elan inside!

[Etienne 7]

Hello all,

It may look surprising to you but the pictures below are of my car, or at least of how it used to look like before being modified back to a road looking version.

The car was bought like that around 2000 by a Swiss called C. L?ke from Luzern. Mr L?ke had all the conversion work done. The car was then sold around 2010 to the French person I bought it from. On the pictures I have, the car already had the Alfa engine. The weird thing is that it seems to have had what looks like UK plates on (GAP586V), I don't understand why. The car is an original LHD as proven by the Lotus Archive.

At some point, I have some paperwork proving that the car belonged to R. Nagler from Thayngen around (from?) 1972. The car was then registered SH18404.

I am trying to contact Mr L?ke by email and will try to contact Mr Nagler.

An interesting thing is that from the plate, you can find who the owner is and his address . To me it is a bit freaky but that's not the subject here . (http://www.linker.ch/eigenlink/autonummern_index.htm) Through that, I managed to find Mr L?ke address but nothing on Mr Nagler.

So, to the Swiss members of this forum: Does anyone of you have seen this car in events (gathering, hillclimb, etc) or have heard of a Mr Nagler in the 70s driving such a car? Is there a Lotus Club of Switzerland? These 2 previous owners are from the german-speaking part of Switzerland. Any one from there?

Looking forward to hearing from you, either here or by personal email.

Regards,

Etienne

[Maulden7]

An S2 car.

If it's any help regarding the UK registration number, GAP was a Brighton issued registration from 1965-2001.

From 1965-1974 it would have been shown as East Sussex (but issued from Brighton)

The UK licensing authorities may be able to help you with the UK owner details (depending on when it was)

The Swiss licensing authorities are notoriously difficult to deal with when registering imported cars for road use (due to the very stringent emissions & exhaust noise level requirements) & it would be interesting to hear how you get on with this?

(I should add that I am currently trying to help a German speaking owner of a Lotus Sunbeam - bought from Germany but originally supplied to Italy - get his car approved for road registration in Switzerland - we've been jumping through various hoops for some months now ..... & still jumping ..... even with the great help of Lotus engineers who were personally involved in the late 70's with the 911 engine redesign required to meet Swiss requirements)

[Etienne 7]

An S2 car.

Hello Maulden7,

Yes, it is a S2, I presented it here.

Thanks for the information on the Brighton area. I'll try to find out more about the time when the car was registered with these plates, and then contact DVLA.

Regards,

[gherlt]

Hello Etienne,
I would try to contact Mr Schaffner (schaffner-racing.ch), Kumschick (http://www.kumschick.com/), Pfenninger (http://www.lotusautos.ch/) or Autozentrum West http://www.lotus-west.ch/, explaining your case. Maybe the PO was a customer from those. Schaffner and Kumschick had/have racing background and deep into classics, Kumschick is 30min from Luzern, they might be the best to start with.

Regards

Guillermo

[Etienne 7]

Thank you for your reply Guillermo. That's a good idea! I will contact Kumshick and see if they can do something for me.

Regards,