Puzzling Paint Predicament

[PaulieG]

Righto folks, I would love to see if any one remembers this car. We have restored a lotus 20/22 ex tony shaw, graham baker, Dave mitchell, bill McCabe. My father bought the car from Ian bisman in 1997. When he bought the car in bits it came with a spare body from a 22. So after we did the first body in graham bakers colours, we thought we would do the spare in the green and yellow the car was when raced in Ireland. So sanding it back today and we found this radical paint scheme. Does anybody recognise this? Surely something like this would be memorable. This car was upgraded in NZ from a 20 to a 20/22 and this would play a big part towards our theory of how that happened.

[PaulieG]

I think the Maroon with Gold metallic was on the car when McCabe ran it in events around Southland IIRC so the orange/yellow should have been either early in his/Westland Excavators ownership or prior to that. There is a B&W pic elsewhere on this site with McCabe & myself at tech check for a sprint in Gore, that might help ID which body was on car at that point in time..

Hi Jac. We have the plum body also, that was the original 20 body. This body was a 22 that was metallic orange, then had the above paint scheme under it. Will try and track the photo of you and bill down as I haven't seen it. Thanks for that.

[stubuchanan]

For what it's worth (bugger all, probably), the paint job looks very much like the style of Walls and Streets Ice Cream logo. But, Google says that was only from 1998 to 2003.

I certainly don't recall any NZ paint jobs like that from the Lotus 20/20B/22 heydays of the 1960's, although the car could have had a second life as a F Ford somewhere. US paint jobs were more flamboyant than most others, perhaps the body came off an import from there?

Stu

[PaulieG]

Thanks Stu. The body has a 1971 registration label, so was obviously used at some point in 1971. I was having thoughts that it may have been the body from Jim Palmers 22? The metallic gold colour didnt bear any race numbers though.

[Ross Hollings]

For what it is worth [which is probably nothing] but i was in the Fiberglass Industry for 20+ years and seem to remember several static childrens rides made in some race car forms.Maybe ...........maybe not.

[PaulieG]

For what it is worth [which is probably nothing] but i was in the Fiberglass Industry for 20+ years and seem to remember several static childrens rides made in some race car forms.Maybe ...........maybe not.

Thanks Ross, we thought about that, but the body had a NZ registration label on the body by the roll hoop, you can see it in the first photo. One can only then assume it was on a actual car.

[Chris Read]

The ex Palmer 20b that I owned was once orange although I had it in Lotus green/yellow. It is now in the UK and back to orange. If you look up 'Ecurie Scalpel' you will see a photo gallery of this car in orange plus photo attached. Pretty sure that the body on the car was original but I can't remember if I ever saw orange underneath. A mould was made and at least 2 bodies were made off it. One went on the Lotus 20b special I built and the other (which I still have) is off another clone of the Palmer (as a FF) car run by Stu Rooney in Dunedin with 'Trouser House' sponsorship (still on the body). Chris Read, Arrowtown.

[PaulieG]

Thanks Chris, The Jim palmer connection came from the shape of the rear cover. I spoke to him once and he told me how he modified the rear cover of his, and it was quite distinctive. Do you have any photos of the body from your Lotus? This body is quite puzzling as the rego sticker tells it was used as a race car but I just cant imagine who would have used that combo of colours, or where the body came from.