To a car enthusiast, automotive journalists are more spoiled than most people. We're flown across the world for a day or two to spend time behind the wheel of, say, the newest Porsche, or to a manufacturer-sponsored, full-line track day at Laguna Seca or Paul Ricard. People think we we have one of the greatest gigs in the world. And I happen to agree. But the kind of people who truly see behind the curtain, who end up with the LaFerrari’s in their actualgarages rather than on magazine covers, often do not have the greatest gig in the world. It’s often something mundane, but it's done to such a high level that the result is vast amounts of money. For example, the richest person I know manufactures cardboard boxes. He lives in the third largest house in Florida. If, by chance, you’re an enthusiast of a particular brand of car and buy your way up the ranks as you make your billions, you may end up with a golden ticket to an event that "never happened." Like my friend Karl, who is a man not only of means, but also of taste. He “works to live,” rather than “lives to work,” and loves his cars. Karl brought one of the coolest cars I’ve ever reviewed, the Lingenfelter LS3 powered, six-speed swapped, Jaguar XJL Vanden Plas, and more recently, what is probably one of the world’s more perfect Porsche 914s. Karl is a world traveler, a collector, and a racer, and sends me the craziest stories about things he’s seen and done. And one of his stories was just too good not to share. In 2010, Karl went to Lotus’s HQ in Hethel, then on to Paris on an exclusive invitation sent out only to the best customers of Lotus during the ambitious and doomed reign of CEO Dany Bahar. Karl was offered a chance to buy the Lotus T125 . Never heard of the Lotus T125? Join the club—I hadn’t either. First, a bit of backstory: In 2009, Lotus Cars of Hethel, UK—founded by the legendary Colin Chapman—was, as usual, in financial trouble. Lotus was under ownership of Malaysian manufacturer, Proton, and had lost money for 15 straight years. So Proton hired a man named Dany Bahar to be CEO of Lotus. His goal? To turn a profit.

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Bahar had an Aaron Eckhart look, a background in marketing, and had a resume consisting mostly of making fuck-tons of money—he was Chief Operations Officer at Red Bull from 2003 to 2007 and created Red Bull Racing (and Scuderia Toro Rosso), in addition to expanding Red Bull’s involvement in other mainstream sports. Then, from 2007 to 2009, he ran Ferrari’s comically profitable licensing division, expanding the brand’s reach into countless suburban mall storefronts and into massive projects like the Ferrari World theme Park in Abu Dhabi. Ferrari, for those not in the know, makes significantly more money on licensing its name and logo than it ever has building or racing cars. In theory, the Lotus hire was inspired: Dany Bahar was young, handsome, energetic, and had worked hugely profitable ventures in the automotive world. Unfortunately, successful as he was, Bahar had critical blindspots: he never worked within a budget, and he never built cars. Both of these issues would be prove crucial to his downfall. But before then, the apex in Bahar’s stint at Lotus was the 2010 Paris Motor Show, to which our friend Karl was given a golden ticket on Lotus’s dime. He was asked not only to see the five new Lotus road cars Bahar had planned to launch, but also, potentially, to buy the ultimate track car: the Lotus Type 125. About a dozen people worldwide were invited to the Lotus factory in Hethel two days before the Paris Motor Show, and then told that Lotus has a secret track car project and they are on the VIP list to buy it. Karl went to the factory, where he and the others were given a tour by Clive Chapman, Colin Chapman’s son. They were shown where vintage Lotus racing cars were restored, where the factory race cars were maintained; they were shown legendary cars from Lotus history, liveried in John Player Special, or single-stage green and yellow. Then they were taken out to the race track for hot laps in the then-new Evora GT4 race car; Karl told me his instructor for the wet track day was none other than Greg Mansell, son of F1 Champion Nigel Mansell. “He was five years my junior but a far more talented driver than I was,” Karl recalled. But they still hadn't been told what the secret project track car was. For that, all the guests were flown to Paris on brand new Hawker 4000 and Premier jets. On their arrival, the same vintage race cars that had been shown in Hethel were now set up in the basement of the Louvre—that's right: the museum that has the Mona Lisa—like matchbox cars on risers, having somehow beaten multiple private jets across the channel. And on its own riser a floor above them all sat the Lotus 125. The 125, or “Project Exos” as it was internally called, is as close to a Formula One car as any company in history has been willing to sell in numbers. It truly was the ultimate track car. To the untrained eye it looks, sounds, and goes identical to a modern F1 car. It was made entirely of Carbon Fiber and weighed just 1,400 lbs. It had a 650-horsepower Cosworth V8 that ran up to 10,300 RPM, and would theoretically do 2,800 miles in between teardowns—five times what an F1 motor would do.