The Lotus Seven is one of those special cars. It isn’t practical, it isn’t a good daily driver, and it isn’t the most attractive machine ever built. Yet with all its problems, it can simply be described as brilliant. It is a work of mechanical art that has one purpose and that’s to go fast. It isn’t fast because of a massive motor or some fancy forced induction system. It’s fast because it’s lightweight. It lacks many of the creature comforts that most car have, but it’s not supposed to have A/C or a radio. Any feature that isn’t needed to be driven only adds speed killing weight! True Lotus built Super Sevens are very hard to come by, especially later cars. This one was originally in New Zealand, but is now in California. Take a look at this survivor here on eBay. Special thanks to Jim S for another great tip!

Describing this as a factory built Lotus Seven is rather difficult, as there weren’t any that were sold as complete cars by Lotus in ’74. To avoid taxes, Lotus was building these as kit cars. When they decided to change their image, they sold the rights to the Seven to Caterham in England and the Steel Brothers in New Zealand. The later only received 95 kits from Lotus, but was still assembling them into 1979. This means that while Lotus was no longer producing Sevens by the time this one was put together, it was in fact built by Lotus. Obviously we are using the term “built” loosely here, but it is amazing to find a true Seven kit and we hear the ones that were assembled by Steel Brothers were extremely well done and offered the most features.

Being a true Lotus Seven rather than a later Caterham version or one of the countless clones, this car is powered by Lotus’ twin cam straight four. It might only be rated for 105 hp, but with a curb weight under 1,200 lbs. you don’t need a lot of power to be quick. Colin Chapman believed winning races wasn’t about accelerating the fastest, but about consistency and maintaining speed through turns. Few cars can carve up the corners like a Seven and chances are you’ll have so much fun doing it that you won’t notice the lack of air conditioning or a radio.

Keeping with the minimalist and lightweight style of the rest of the car, it makes sense that the interior would be bare bones as well. The seller claims everything on this car is original, except the seats. Even the hardtop is original, which happens to be an extremely rare option. Some parties have already tried to get the seller to let go of the hardtop separately, but thankfully the seller has enough integrity to keep it with the car for this auction.

We would love to have a real Lotus Seven, but we know chances are we will just have to settle for a clone or a Locost. That doesn’t mean we can’t dream of all the impractical fun that we would get from carving up every mountain and back road we could find in one. Unrealistic and impractical as they are, there is just something special about these twin cam roadsters that we love. Does anyone else share our love for the impracticality of the Seven?