: History: A God given talent

Thanks for the reminder Jorge. It's the 7th of April that is my memorial day. I was a huge Clark fan as a teenager and could get to Oulton Park by hitch-hiking so I saw him win there in the three-wheeling Lotus Cortina and finish down the field in the Gold Cup F1 race in a car which was badly short of power in the early 3-litre era. I hitch-hiked overnight to get to Silverstone to see him win the 1967 British GP, which unfortunately turned out to be his last race on British soil.

In 1993 I assisted at the 25th anniversary of his death by marshalling the racing cars (with a Clark connection of course) outside the Jim Clark Memorial Room on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday by scouring the paddock at Knockhill racetrack for Lotus cars to take part in a parade and match them with the famous drivers who would be passengers. I was so busy doing this that I had to throw the keys of my car to the ancien pilot I was due to take around and tell him he was driving it. Had a good chat with Innes Ireland, just 6 months before he died, and was given a bottle of "Jim Clark" whisky for my efforts. Innes had also been given a bottle and told me he'd drunk it all the previous evening, so I wasn't going to give him the keys to my car!

Some years earlier I was in Scotland for some reason and stopped to have a look at Edington Mains, Jim's farm. I was invited inside and had a tour of the place which the then owner was thinking of offering Bed & Breakfast. I wrote it up for Lotus World magazine thinking it would be a huge hit with Lotus owners visiting Duns, but in the end they didn't do the B&B after all.

Here is a drawing I did in 1988 of the first Lotus I ever saw in 1960, also the first Lotus I owned but not the first I raced.

This does not give an idea of the size of this car -- the original Austin/Morris Mini towers over it! But it's like a Carrera: everything you need, nothing you don't ;-)

Mike