Hello Folks,    Where were we?        Ah yes ...  as I said ...  I'd forgotten about the Manual, when in walked Mark Roberts swathed in bandages ... No, No! ...not from the racing incident ... burns from the fire!   After he'd related the story ... you know ... the one about setting fire to his Super Seven and his pal's dad's garage, stables and country pile, he asked me if I'd finished collecting and collating 'all that stuff  ('crap', I think, was the word he used) for the Elite Workshop Manual'.  I told him it had gone off ages ago and I was still waiting for the proofs. 

"Come with me." he said.

I followed him round to the Lotus Cars, Spare Parts Department and silently he pointed to a stack of green covered books behind the counter. I picked one up and stared in disbelief at ... The Lotus Elite, Workshop Manual. 

"But ...  But ..."  I stammered, or noises to that effect.

It looked great!   I flipped through - splendid!  Super pics!   Wow! 

I sat down with it and looked a bit more closely. I quickly realised that the comprehensive (and comprehendible) bits with the clear pics and diagrams were direct lifts from other companies' manuals. These were loosely tied together, where they were tied together at all, with extracts from the notes I'd written and other bits and jottings. The Section on Fibre Glass Repairs was pretty good but the rest was a hotch-potch of repetitions and omissions, misnomers and mis-spellings, literals and lapsus calami ... crap, crap, all total crap.  But you know!  You've got one!

There and then, I washed my hands of it. Amen

Now there are those,  I'm reliably told, who claim that they wrote the Manual. Tony Caldersmith, the Elite Service Manager of the day at Cheshunt,  for one. He made the claim to Dennis Ortenburger that he and James Allington wrote it. Well he and any others are welcome, to that very dubious honour. I did my little bit, but never got to see it in proof or page before it was published. Did anyone out there proof read it? 

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!
 

By the way, to this day, I've never actually read it.  What's it like? What's it really like?  I put myself among those who only read the instructions when all else has failed, and even then I try to get by with just looking at the pictures. Or I get Her indoors to read it aloud while I look at the actual bits ... as I softly curse the deathless prose.

Apart from that, I quite liked it, really!

That's all for a while. 

Tony Sommerard.    20 Nov 2001