That one time I almost broke the Lotus 79

"RacersJunkyard" (RacersJunkyard) 10/14/2014 at 17:59 • Filed to: None

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This is the Lotus 79.

The black one in the front. And this is a story about how I almost destroyed it. The year was 2011 and I was working with a great group of people at a Concorso. For those of you that don't know, a Concorso is a lot like a car show, except it only features cars that have a special pedigree or are owned by someone famous. The guest list is usually very VIP and the general public does not attend. Concorsos are less like car shows and more like art exhibitions with cars as the art pieces. No burnouts, no stereo competitions and certainly no rolling out of the show at maximum volume. It's all very posh.

As I said, I was lucky enough to be working with a man who we'll call Ned at the time and Ned had made friends with the gentleman who was running this affair, so I was able to get a spot on the technical side of things. Helping set up lights and sound, positioning the cars for the event and being a general catch all customer service person for the event. I felt like I was super lucky to do this, and I was. I got to touch some rarefied machines, Ralph Lauren's Maclaren F1 was there.

There it is.

There was a rolling chassis for a Mclaren MP 4-12C.

That's it right there parked in front of the Veyron.

And so was Sir Sterling Moss, Al Unser Sr. and innumerable other amazing cars.

Like all of these.

I got to shake hands with Sir Sterling himself, that was probably the highlight of the show for me until at the end of the day we had to roll all of these old beautiful cars back out to the trailers and get them home. Ned and I had been moving a few cars and guiding them out of the estate that was hosting the event. We were being careful and things were great. We rolled out some Porsches, some old race cars like the ones above, and it was all a great time. Some of the caretakers of these cars even slipped me a few bucks as thanks for helping their low slung beautiful rides make it safely onto the trailer.

Then it came time to move the beautiful black F1 car. The lotus 79. For those of you that don't know, the Lotus 79 is important to motorsport history because it was one of the first cars to really fully take advantage of ground effect aerodynamics. It is an amazing car to behold, the 79 won 7 races, 10 pole positions, 121 points and won the last drivers and constructors championships for Lotus. And who was the driver that year? Take a closer look at the car.

Mario who?

Mario Andretti was the pilot of this phenomenal car. This black beautiful machine was sitting right in front of me and we needed to help guide it onto a specialized climate controlled trailer at the end of a gravel roadway. No big deal. However if you know anything about F1 cars, you know that they are fickle beasts. At their best they need a full crew of master technicians to keep them running. On this particular day, it was myself, Ned, Ned's girlfriends and three guys from Lotus. The guys who were with the lotus swapped off the slick racing tires and popped on some narrower wheels with tires more suited to fitting on the trailer, this car is very wide after all and needed to be made smaller not only to fit in the trailer but also over a small bridge that was between where the car was and the trailer was sitting.

This bridge, to the naked eye was just that, a small wooden bridge spanning a tiny stream on the property. The person who decided to put it there probably never gave it a second thought. They probably liked the way it looked and never even considered what it could possibly mean for a world famous formula 1 car. Because this bridge, like so many others had a slight rise to it as part of its architecture. So it swept up and back down probably about twenty inches in total. The bridge itself was about thirty feet long though, so the rise and fall was almost imperceptible.

The Lotus 79 is such an amazing car but it also could not move under its own power. Therefore it had to be attached at a tow point under the chassis with a strap to the back of a golf cart, my golf cart. We had been doing this procedure all day. As I said before we had moved about a dozen cars out before this one without incident. So why should this one be any different? We set off at a snails pace. I was driving the golf cart nice and slow, Ned was sitting next to me, his girlfriend and the three guys with the Lotus were walking slowly next to the car to steer it towards the bridge. As we approached the start of the bridge none of us considered that when I drove up the rise of the bridge that an accompanying fall would be sure to come.

The tow strap had about six feet of space between the front of the Lotus and the back of my golf cart. So as I started to descend the bridge those twenty inches. I began to think, "I don't feel tension on that tow strap any more." I think all the people around the car must have had the same thought as the Lotus started to pick up speed towards the back of my cart. One of the guys actually yelled "Oh shit" and dove face first into the Lotus to do, what I can only guess, was mash the brake pedal with his hand. That didn't help.

By this time my golf cart was off the bridge and back onto gravel. The Lotus was moving faster and coming down the bridge at us.

"Speed up!" Ned blurted out. So I tapped the golf carts throttle and moved the slack out of the line. All of the people next to the lotus were grabbing onto anything they could find to slow down the car before the beautifully hand sculpted, world champion, nose could crush itself into the back of a $9,000 golf cart. The next few seconds were agony. I heard boots slide across gravel as the guys holding the Lotus back did everything they could to save it. I sucked in my breath, dreading the sound of collapsing fiberglass, praying that the lawyers from Lotus would only crush me for destroying such an icon and not my unborn children's children. I heard Ned say "Oh crap" and all the color went out of his face. I tapped the throttle on the cart once again praying that they could wrestle the Lotus back in control.

And it worked.

I felt the, tow strap tug on the back of the cart once, twice and by the third tug I knew that the Lotus was safe. Everyone heaved a big sigh and we were safe. Once the trailer was loaded with the Lotus, the car's manager, the guy who dove into the car gave me a hefty tip and a hug. "I thought we were done for back there! Those brakes didn't work at all!" He told me. He shook my hand and that was the last I saw of him.

Once we drove the cart back into the estate to start towing a beautiful Yenko Camaro, Ned showed me just how close we had come to disaster. Apparently the Lotus had come so close to the cart that the nose of the race car had actually gone UNDER the little step on the back of the cart, coming within real millimeters of destruction. I knew what the Lotus 79 was and who Mario Andretti was at the time. I couldn't believe that I had come so close to being universally reviled by Lotus fans the world over for almost taking the face off of the last Lotus to win a world championship. I promptly went into the bathroom and vomited.

So the moral of the story is, if you're ever towing a car and you want to make sure it travels safely, please for the love of god, make sure the brakes work first and that someone is sitting in the drivers seat. Otherwise you end up with shit like this happening and making some poor kid (me) terrified to go anywhere near a golf cart ever again.

I'm on twitter @racersjunkyard if you want to follow.

thebigbossyboss > RacersJunkyard 10/14/2014 at 18:05

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Man. Had that happened it would have been the derpiest moment to ever have derped.

RacersJunkyard > thebigbossyboss 10/14/2014 at 18:22

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uofime > RacersJunkyard 10/15/2014 at 17:28

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when you mentioned the rise and fall my first thought was the you were going to bottom it out and scrape the bottom of it

RacersJunkyard > uofime 10/15/2014 at 20:24

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thank god no! The bridge really didn't allow for that due to how long it was. I may be off on my measurements.