From:
Car Magazine June, 1967
It
comes as a shock to discover that the bonnet and windowsills are only as high
as the back bumper – that reaching the neat recessed handle involves bending
almost double. Yet the doors are wide and their bottoms don’t foul the average
kerb, and furthermore the sills are narrow, so that entry can be dignified for
the agile and remains at least a possibility for those who have passed their 30th
birthday and thus have one foot in the grave so soon already.
Once
inside, one requires convincing that this is not what it feels like to have both feet in the grave. One sits at
first hunched over the wheel, gazing distractedly at the dashboard and
wondering why there is no headroom. Then one leans back… and back… and back,
seeking the remainder of the seat. One finds it, and simultaneously the
headrest, and suddenly everything including the kerb and people’s legs and
hub-nuts of buses is not only out there but UP. It’s like lying down in the
bottom of a light bulb, gazing at the road between one’s toes. It’s like the
very end, before they nail down the lid. A shovelful of earth dropped from a
great height would be too much like real – er life.
Panic
over, one takes stock of the office equipment. The wheel is a gem: chunky,
perforated, leather-rimmed and therefore inclined to leave your hands filthy on
a hot day). Dash layout is clean and functional, but its matt-finished alloy
faces reflect fiendishly in the wildly sloping screen. Two knobs face backwards
in the top of the console (heater and choke) and we could never remember which
was which. The rest are toggles and easily mastered, with the gearlever a handy
stub in precisely the right place and the ashtray (no windows, remember)
inaccessible beyond. The handbrake – a plastic umbrella – looks terrible but it
is easy to reach and works well.
Lying
back there, peering down your nose, you feel pretty good, considering
visibility out the front and to the sides is first rate: better than in a
Marcos, for example, because the bonnet is low in proportion and slopes away so
that it never intersects your line of vision even on a humpback bridge.
Straight out behind you can see enough, too, but the view to the rear quarters
is hopeless. At an angled crossroads you just can’t see a thing, and to make it
worse, our car had no wing mirrors. If they want to avoid constant niggles
about this, Lotus will have to ask John Frayling to think again, and quickly:
we wonder, for example, if he has enquired why Farina wraps round the ends of
the rear window and installs quarterlights in his rear-engined Dino coupè?
While Lotus are at it, why not put runners down the ridges of the quarter
panels and cause the roof to slide open? Not that upward visibility is as bad
as you might think, since the side screen and side windows reach a long way
inwards at the top.
The
engine, being mostly alloy, asks for choke most mornings but starts and stops
obediently (we had no running-on after curing a blocked main jet) and is quick
to warm up. Or car would mist-up after a cold start, and since there was no
heat available at that point things became distinctly fraught. On a very hot
day the big plastic R10 face-level vents managed to puff through just about
enough fresh air to stop us feeling claustrophobic but getting stuck behind
another car was the end. Its exhaust pipe would come to within a foot of the
air intake and the cockpit would fill with fumes. Short-term remedy: open the
doors. Long-term: develop opening windows and to hell with what it costs, or at
worst arrange a separate inlet and fan for the face level system from scuttle
height.
On
the move, the biggest surprise is that the beast is quiet. Conversation is always possible, usually in subdued tones.
Wind noise is seldom noticeable. The engine pulses away only inches from your
ears, yet never really intrudes despite scant visible insulation, possibly
because the bulk-head is free from the usual holes for controls and such. There
is no great impression of power: one would not expect it with a cooking family
car unit only mildly ameliorated, despite the claimed kerb weight of only 11
cwt. But the torque curve is nice and flat, the engine is smooth and flexible
and there always seems to be enough in hand. The only real irritation is the
gearing, which in so many French cars is high in top and low in the other
three.
But
the change is lovely: very stiff, yet nice short movements and a well-defined
gate. We kept beating the synchromesh between first and second during our
performance session, but nowhere else. The figures reveal an ability to
accelerate at about 75 percent of the standard Elan’s rate. Top speed is lower
than we expected at 108mph, with the tachometer nearing the red. But there is
plenty of acceleration all the way up there.
Speeds
in the gears at the red line work out (allowing for speedometer correction:
ours was in kilometers) at 37mph for first, 57 for second and 88 for third.
There is plenty of torque low down, so that one is not constantly shifting down
into second, and the engine is completely without temperament.
Ride
comes as another surprise if you are not familiar with Chapman’s little ways.
It feels marginally less soft than the Elan’s but more controlled, with some
high-frequency pitching (though less than on most rear-engined cars) and very
little roll. In our car you could hear the forward mounting points for the rear
suspension creaking, and there were sundry rattles – particularly from the
exhaust system where it fouled the chassis. But there is no reason to suppose
these will survive the very early stages of production. Less impressive is a
tendency towards bump steer which may or may not survive the prototype stage.
Brakes?
They’re Girling discs at the front, drums at the back, and for some reason they
are very heavy indeed. This jarred our confidence somewhat – unnecessarily as
it turned out, since the g-figure was
reasonable and we failed to provoke any fade. But a servo would be nice, of a
different lining mix, or better still a set of those splendid Renault discs all
round.
When
it comes to the handling and cornering departments, the Europa really begins to
win friends. The steering feels intelligently geared (on the low side, but
manageable) and is pleasantly light, although it transmits shocks rather too
freely. All the other controls are quite obviously connected and there is an
immediate feeling of oneness with the machine. Approaching a corner, one is
conscious at first if mild understeer leveling off to the point of neutrality.
Trying
harder, the initial understeer increases, bringing into focus the point at
which it disappears. The steering remains light, with just enough
self-centering. This is the moment of truth. If you are really going to
exercise the roadholding, you stick your boot in and wait for the back to nudge
around – but gently, not like a car with the sting right in the tail. You catch
it on the steering and, keeping the power on, sail off into the closest
possible imitation of four-wheel drift, balancing sideways movement against
forward movement with your right foot and keeping the wheels in line with the
body. Cautiously you edge off, straighten up and accelerate away. If you’ve
done it right, you have just taken a corner at better than .9 lateral g – the
highest figure CAR has ever recorded, and more than a full point better than
either the Elan or a good Elite can manage.
Normally,
of course, you keep within sane limits. But even then the Europa will corner
the pants off any Mini while you hum a gentle ditty and your bird lights a
cigarette. All is calm (apart from a bit of tyre noise) and the excellent seats
hold you both firmly in place. This you can do for hours on end with no feeling
of strain, either mental of mechanical.
Which,
of course, is the Europa’s secret. Its essential balance, its aerodynamics, its
seating, its silence these things mean confidence, and confidence means
relaxation. We can’t speak for its behavior in wet weather on in cross winds,
since this brief but intensive session provided neither. But we can say that
the machine feels right, is practical in the sense that you can get in and our
and find somewhere to put your baggage (provided you use and asbestos suitcase)
and that its roadholding makes it one of the quickest point-to-point cars yet
devised.
We confidently predict that it will one day become available in England – Ford
powered, as the Elan’s successor.