October-December 2006

Vol.1 No.4

In this issue Diane Webber

The Challman Chronicles Team Elite, Part 1, David Buxton

Elite Technical FP98

The Internet Quarterly Publication for Lotus Elite Owners and Enthusiasts

Caldersmith’s Elite Art The ex-Barry Gray Australian road rally car painted by Brian Caldersmith.

Dennis Ortenburger’s Lotus Elite Journal Vol.1 No.4 October-December 2006 Cover Picture Nick Fleming after a hard fought victory. He and his father Dr. Al Fleming have set class lap records at several circuits in Scotland in chassis 1886. Cover photo by Ian Hardy www.ianhardy.net

CONTENTS The Editor’s Muse Email Diane Webber The Challman Chronicles Team Elite, Part 1, David Buxton Elite Technical FP98

Coming Next Issue Team Elite, Part 2, Clive

Hunt

The Editor’s Muse It is hard for me to believe the Journal is a year old. It has been great fun and very sat-isfying to open up my archives and share some of the stories and images found therein. Over the years I’ve had numerous requests to loan my collections but have refused. Like most of us I learned long ago that a loaned book was a lost book. Anyway judging from your emails you are enjoying the ride as well. Of all the words I’ve written the most frequent requests are for “Flying on Four Wheels, The Story Of Frank Costin and His Car Designs.” It occurred to me several years ago I had but one copy on my book shelf, the others had been loaned and thus given away. So, all you seekers of Elite lore stay tuned. Eventually all will be revealed. With this last issue of ought six I wish you all well. Our small group of subscribers repre-sent the most enthusiastic of Elite owners and enthusiasts and I hope the New Year will provide the opportunity for many miles of great motoring. This issue was particularly fun to put together because of my good luck in having years ago met two of the star attractions in Vol.1 No.4; David Buxton and Diane Webber. Diane only briefly but in person there was no doubt why she had so many fans. I had the chance to visit several times at length with Buxton and was taken with his enthusiasm for the Elite. Like us he was smitten with the car, not just as an automobile salesman peddling a product, but a guy who really loved the car. At the time I met him the Elite had been out of production for 15 years or so but his excitement in reliving his adventures was as vivid as if they happened yesterday. I do hope you enjoy this issue as much as I did reminiscing. Dennis Ortenburger lotuselitejournal@charter.net

EMAIL From Olav Glasius President Lotus Club Holland In the letter from Peter Kirwan– Taylor (Lotus Elite Journal Vol.1 No.1) he mentioned Rembrandt pastels by Talous. The company name is Talens and not Talous in the city of Apeldoom in Holland in those days. They were, of course, named after the great Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. From Ben Edwards Lotus Enthusiast I enjoyed your article on Lotus patches (Vol.1 No.3). Your read-ers should know many Lotus patches are currently produced on embroidery machines and have no connection with the com-pany or its history. These producers make patches for many types of cars. Attached is a picture of what I consider the worst quality patch I’ve ever seen. In closing, keep up the good work.

Diane Webber & The Lotus Elite Diane Marguerite Empey was born in Los Angeles on June 27, 1932. Her father was a Hollywood screen writer and film producer and her mother was a dancer. After high school she attended a college of the arts in San Francisco where she studied modern dance. To help pay expenses she got into modeling which is where her career took off. Through the 50s, 60s and even early 1970s she was arguably the best known figure/girlie/nude model in the US. She posed for Playboy in 1955 and ‘56 and about the same time married Joe Webber. Diane Webber posed for magazine covers, pictorials and advertisements. It is the latter that is of par-ticular interest to Elite enthusiasts. In 1961 she was hired by Western Distributors (the company that took over the Jay Chamberlain Elite inventory after his ouster) for an advertising cam-paign. The result was a series of extraordinary im-ages of Diane and the Elite.

Glossy 8x10 photographs found their way to most of the Elite dealers in the States and several overseas. One of the tamer pic-tures was also used in ads in sev-eral Southern California sports car race programs. More modest notwithstanding, later ads fea-tured Diane somewhat clothed. The enthusiast’s press got a set of pictures as well and several re-ported their findings.

News of the advertising campaign featuring a nude Diane Webber got a chilly reception at the Works in Cheshunt. In fact, it was reported management was outraged. The atti-tude of Western Distributors was somewhat cavalier about the whole thing and they went on to produce an Elite sales brochure using, of course, Diane Webber. The bro-chure has become one of the most sought after pieces of Elite automobilia. Diane was featured in four panels. The brochure was unusual because it opened to reveal four more panels, although these were considerably more restrained. All are pictured here.

Notice the back panel has Bob Challman’s stamp inserted above the West-ern Distributors logo. The space was provided for any Elite dealer to place their name and address.

Cover of brochure

Back of brochure

When the brochure was unfolded these panels appeared. Several of the images in the lower left hand page were used in Western Distributors magazine ads.

Of course, if you believe the Elite was the only car Diane Webber posed with, you’d be wrong.

As Diane got a little older she began to concentrate on dance, specifically belly dance. In the late 1960s through the 70s she led a troupe of dancers that would perform at faires and festi-vals like the Renaissance Pleasure Faires in Northern and Southern California. It was there I first saw Diane in person and can affirm she was a beauty. She carried a few extra pounds by then but she’d lost none of her allure. In her later career she taught belly dancing at a women’s workshop in the San Fer-nando Valley, the very locale that saw the first Elite deal-ers in the US. With the newly published The Original Lotus Elite Racing Car for the Road hot in my hand I paid her a visit. I added graciousness to her list of attributes as she signed her picture in the book. As this was written Diane is still with us.

The Challman Chronicles By Gene deRuelle

Our lube man was Jack Hannan. One very nice man. Any-way, one of the things Jack checked out when he lubed an Elite was the tightness of the nuts and bolts on the rear disc brakes. These had a tendency to loosen from time to time. Well, as I am sure you are aware, the space to get a wrench in there is almost non-existent. Jack got tired of fighting to get tools up in there so he cut the box end off two combination wrenches, leaving only the open end portion plus a good bit of handle. To this he welded 24” extensions. Now when he had the car up on the lift, he could get the wrench up in that tiny space and had enough handle to torque them tight. Worked great. He took his tools home one weekend and Monday morning brought them back. The handles were now painted Lotus green with 1/2” yellow stripes every two inches. Jack hung them on the wall under a sign that said, “Lotus Factory Tools”.

Several pictures of the Elite sans Webber were also taken during the “shoot” but, oddly enough, none were ever used in the Western Distributors advertising.

The Story of Team Elite, Part 1 The David Buxton Years

The story of Team Elite begins with an irrepressible, gregarious and slick car salesman by the name of David Buxton. Notice his description might also be applied to Colin Chapman which is why the two got on so well. As we’ll see, unbelievably well. Buxton had raced an early Elite (chassis 1021) registered 500KRA which he’d pur-chased factory direct. No doubt it was either when the car was ordered or when it was delivered that he met Chapman. This car, incidentally is owned and raced today by Peter Stohrmann in Germany. By 1960 Buxton had been appointed the Lo-tus main agent in Derbyshire. He set up proper maintenance facilities and began selling Elites in earnest. In fact, his Derby dealership sold more Elites than any other of the period. A fact not lost on Chapman or Fred Bushell who’d call on Buxton from time to time to help them “unload” a backlog of cars. During this period Buxton went from success to success which may be best illustrated by some of his adverts that appeared in AUTOSPORT magazine. Notice he went from a main agent for Lotus to also selling TVR, then Mercedes and then Maserati. He also took up flying lessons and began selling Piper Aircraft.

Buxton raced his car with modest success but was quick to see the opportunity of form-ing an Elite racing team. Chapman had been bemoaning the fact he couldn’t afford the time, space or money to field a Work’s effort despite the car’s early success. Recall El-ites had taken a first and second in class in the 1959 Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. Buxton’s offer was a win for both men. Buxton could get into big time racing and Chap-man could direct the resources of his company to other projects.

Buxton formed Team Elite in 1960 and his first driver was his friend and lawyer, Bill Allen. (That’s Buxton right and Allen left.) Critical readers might have already guessed that Bux-ton’s meteoric rise in the car and airplane business might have come by a little slight of hand, but more on this later. Allen would prove his worth to Buxton in more ways than one. There was one other member of the original Team Elite and that was John Wagstaff. John lived in Der-byshire and had gotten to know Buxton during John’s racing days with a Lotus Eleven. He’d purchased an Elite from the Buxton dealership and wanted to race that car as well. Initially, there were two cars, one for Buxton and Al-len to share and the other belonging to Wagstaff. His

car carrying a road registration, FP98. (This car is currently owned by Horst Auer in Germany. Details elsewhere this issue.) Both the cars were painted BRG and had small lettering on the upper part of the doors reading “Team Elite”. In a letter Buxton wrote to me in 1978 he explained, “Although we didn’t know it at the time we were also participating in the twilight of the private entrepreneurial race car driver, works sponsored or recognized or not. Team Elite only appeared in 1 1/4 inch high letters on the cars. It was an intensely personal matter.” The Team Elite letter head is illustrated below. To the right of that is the Team Elite racing data sheet.

Team Elite’s first major test came at the 1960 Le Mans 24 hours. All were confident that the previ-ous year’s results would at the very least be dupli-cated if not surpassed. Did I mention Buxton was also extremely optimistic about everything?

Buxton reported to the press that great pains had been taken to prepare the two cars for Le Mans. Interestingly he said the Wagstaff/Tony Marsh entry (car no. 41) was specially tuned in order to go after the Index of Thermal Efficiency. His car (no. 42), co-driven by Allen was set up to try for another class win, the first time the new 1300cc Class had been seen at Le Mans. “From our point of view the race went almost as planned. Le Mans is an endurance race and the only aim is to keep to a fixed plan. The fantastic rain, the per-sonal dices with other drivers and the hundred-and-one separate items to be coped with whilst driv-ing Le Mans are almost unnoticed by the driver as he grinds round watching the Mulsanne corners and his watch.” In the end the Buxton/Allen car retired with a shattered clutch. It happened at about 6am just as Buxton was handing the car over to Allen. Meantime, the Wag-staff/Marsh

Elite was running like a train, albeit not without some starter motor trouble. Still, they were not far behind the French en-tered Elite of Masson/Laurent which they

began to pursue in earnest. At the chequer their drive was rewarded by a first in the In-dex and a second in class, the French Elite having taken a first in class and second in the Index. The French Elite had been entered by Colin Chapman’s old friend Jabby Crombac and his calculations showed his entry first in the Index. This was a big deal, incidentally, not only for the prestige but also because of a sizeable cash prize.

After the race was long over and the Index win awarded to Wagstaff and Marsh the Le Mans organizers took another look at their records and realized Crombac was right. They had no choice but to award a duplicate prize to Masson and Laurent. Team Elite was allowed, however, to keep their honors and the money which was always given to the mechanics. Buxton and Chapman were delighted with the first Team Elite Le Mans effort although in so doing they ignored the little scoring error in France. So did virtu-ally all of the motoring press in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world, except of course, the magazine Crombac published in France, SPORT AUTO.

After Le Mans Team Elite contested virtually all of the national caliber events in the UK. The next international race was at the Nurburgring. Two cars were entered, one for John Wagstaff and the other Bill Allen. Both cars failed to finish, one went out with a

broken diff and the other with a steering failure. Wagstaff is pictured on the left. Next up was Montlhery with three cars entered for Wagstaff, Allen and Buxton. Buxton went out with locking brakes but Wagstaff and Allen took first and second in class in that or-der. The picture at right shows the cars of Wagstaff and Al-len on the pre-grid. Both the team and the Works were buoyed by their success

and all looked forward to the next race on the continent—Spa. Two cars were entered for this race, one for Wagstaff and the other for Allen. Buxton had to sort out some business improprieties and with the help of Allen’s legal expertise was able to stay out of serious trouble although he was to be “detained” for awhile in the UK. Spa was disastrous. On the last lap of the race with Wagstaff leading the class and Allen second Wagstaff spun off into a ditch to avoid a back marker. The hapless Allen hit the

same back marker straight on and rolled several times totally destroying the car. Despite being ejected through a break in the roof he survived with minor bruises and scrapes. Looking at the car after the crash it was clear he was lucky indeed. The picture on the left shows the Allen Elite after it had been righted by the marshals. Part of the agreement struck by Buxton and Chapman was that in the event of a right-off the Works would supply a new lightweight CBU. Buxton recalled the re-placements were the new Series II cars but were decid-

edly heavier in the bargain. As we’ll see in the story of Team Elite, Part 2 the mechan-ics went to great lengths to lighten the cars for competition. So, two new CBUs along with most of the hardware to finish the cars were delivered to the Buxton shops in Derbyshire. Buxton decided to buy a new car for himself but his legal problems continued to mount. In fact, he ultimately had to abandon his dealership and leave the country for a short period. With that his shops struggled to stay open and at least maintain the previous customer’s cars. Unable to maintain the team cars the engine prep was farmed out to Cosworth. Before Buxton had to leave the country the team decided on a new paint scheme since the three Elites were delivered painted white. To compliment the new color they added green racing stripes. The hue, incidentally, matched the triangular marking on the tail of the car that identified its speed potential. There were different geometric patterns and colors for each class, the purpose to alert over-taking drivers of the speed potential of the cars ahead. Everyone thought the cars looked very smart in the new livery but an advantage was later discovered which was the cars became more visible in the distance to the mechan-ics who manned the pit boards. In 1961 the team forged ahead due primarily to the financial assistance of Clive Hunt (more on him in Part 2) and the enthusiasm of John Wagstaff and Bill Allen who contin-ued to provide legal advice to the exiled Buxton. Credit also has to be given to the team’s mechanics, Ron Bennett and Cyril Embrey who worked tirelessly to keep the cars at the ready.

To everyone’s amazement David Buxton returned to England and was immediately offered the job of the man-ager of Home Market Sales for all of Lotus. Chapman had appointed Buxton to a post held by Robin Read who did-n’t know of the deal until the last minute. Read quit, of course, no doubt due to Chapman’s description of Buxton as a ‘super sales-man”. Alas, Buxton was still being hounded by the au-thorities and eventually dropped out of sight again.

Then, suddenly, in 1972 Colin Chapman bought a company called “Moonraker Boats” from none other than David Buxton. The boats were high end cabin cruisers that were known for their lux-ury appointments. When I met him in 1978 Buxton had opened Fordbeck Motor Service that sold and maintained Citroen and, yes, Lotus as well. His enthusiasm for Chapman and Lotus had dimin-ished not in the least over time and, if anything, I found him as excited about Lotus as a school kid. I could certainly understand why he’d sold a lot of cars, there’s no question, he really could charm the birds

out of the trees. There was something else about David Bux-ton. On our first acquaintance Marlene no-ticed that he had numerous “passion bites” about his neck no doubt administered by his very voluptuous companion at the time. Besides racing, Team Elite and all the rest of his exploits he was well known for his amorous adventures as well. One of which made the local newspapers. It seems he had rigged a rope contraption in his living room. On one occasion he’d become en-snared rather like a fly in a spider’s web. His girlfriend panicked, called the emer-

gency medical service, who in turn notified the police, and fled the scene. Luckily, Bux-ton was freed from his bonds without injury but certainly, not without a degree of em-barrassment. By the way. There is a town in Derbyshire called Buxton. I wonder….

Technical

FP98; John Wagstaff ‘s Team Elite Racecar It is good to know several of the world’s men of means have amassed collections of Lotus Elites. In most cases these fellows have gone to the time and trouble to restore the cars to their original con-dition. One such enthusiast is Horst Auer in Germany. He has a particular fondness for very early cars and has treated them to the careful restora-tion they deserve. As he says, “Even for the next genera-tion.” His collection includes chas-sis 1002P, 1019, 1021, 1027, 1050, 1062, and 1213 recently imported from America. The last fitted with a V8 engine which will be discarded, of course, and replaced with a proper Climax. The car that interests us for now is chassis number 1027 which by all accounts is the ex-John Wagstaff Team Elite race car. It should be noted here that unlike many racing Elites in the UK in the 60s John’s registration—FP98 was a real one and resides today, as it has over these many years, on his everyday road car. Last I saw, a Mercedes Benz. 1027 is an extraordinarily significant Elite not only for its many podium finishes at both the club and international level but also for 2nd in Class at the 1960 Le mans 24 Hours. As we explained earlier in this issue his car was wrongly credited with the Index of Thermal Efficiency win in the same race. As we’ve seen Bill Allen and Wagstaff crashed their Elites at SPA. Allen’s was written off but John’s was taken back to the David Buxton shops for repair. Instead of restoring it to race condition it was given a superficial make over for the street and disappeared into obscurity. Buxton arranged for new, Series 2 cars for Allen, Wagstaff and himself painted in the new white and green team colors. Little is known about the history of 1027 after it left the Derbyshire Lotus dealership until Horst Auer saw it in 1981. Despite being in hospital bed he bought the car in 1982 and stored it in his workshop in Germany until his health improved. He knew the car probably had provinence because of its early chassis number but, at

the time, no one knew that 1027 was the Wag-staff Elite. Horst credits his discovery while read-ing the book, “Flying on Four Wheels” and seeing a picture of the Wagstaff Elite with its number illumination light drilled onto the right hand door. “This rang a bell because Le Mans cars for-merly had to show the lamp on the other side. I started to look for the four leather strap bores… I found the bores in the body and also in the front bonnet.” There were other clues including a scar on the steering rack which had come adrift on John at the Nurburgring and made contact with the front engine pulley.

Letters were dispatched to Wagstaff and several members of Club Elite. Wagstaff was at once skeptical. Malcolm Ricketts and David Mousley took a close look at the car in Eng-land where it had been taken for a complete restoration at the hands of Rawlston Ltd. They agreed Auer’s Elite was certainly the ex-Wagstaff Le Mans car. Wagstaff remained unconvinced because of several other details not consistent with his Elite. For example, there was evidence (holes in the trailing edge of the rear wheel well) for the fitting of spats. The Le Mans organizers insisted on these to limit spray during rain. Trouble was, the new rule came in in 1960, a year after Wagstaff’s second place finish. As we know, the car’s career with Team Elite ended in 1959. There was also the matter of the num-ber 1026 stenciled onto the transmission tunnel below the dash board. And finally, the fact that the chassis plate had been delivered to Auer after he’d picked up the car. Meantime the Auer Elite was being treated to a thorough resto and made ready for the 2005 Goodwood Revival. A broken dynamo ended the car’s racing debut but the level of presentation was first rate. The collage pictured here is from Goodwood.