Ibought my Lotus in 2007, as a kind of 60th birthday present to myself. It was the realisation of a long-held dream because I have always been into sports cars, and like many people my age with a similar affliction, the ultimate sports car was always the Lotus Elan. It took me a while to work up to it, though. My first sports car had been a Frogeye Sprite that I bought in 1968 when I was 22 years old. At that point cars like this were seen as vaguely collectible, but were generally considered to be old cars that were a little bit interesting and might be worth hanging on to. I sold that Sprite for just £200, but that was a little more than I'd paid and the car was in a terrible state so I wasn't exactly robbed.
A couple of years later I bought a much newer Sprite, one from 1964. This would have been in 1970 so it was just six years old at the time. I only kept that one for six months though, because I'd bought it on hire-purchase and I didn't like owing money. Plus I had met my wife, Diane, and got married just three months after buying the Sprite, so money was a bit tight for a while. Actually, there is a story there. We met in Camborne on
