As others have said most of the various types and makes of 7s can be given traditional styling with very little work. Keep looking at what's
out there and keep looking beyond skin deep. It is entirely practical to recapture the classic 7 look with only a few minor changes.
At one time I was determined to try and find a classic series 2 or series 3 Lotus 7 but soon realised this would mean borrowing a pile of money i
hadn't got in order to buy something that has actually been done quite a lot better by others since.
After a lot of thought I worked out that what i really waned was the essence of an early Super 7: the driving experience of roaring around inches
above the road surface, cornering on rails, making enough noise to wake the dead, immediate reactions to brakes throttle and steering, mechanical
simplicity and the classic look and styling. It didn't really matter whose name was on the chassis so long as it fulfilled these criteria.
When i started to look around at the current market, what was out there to be built and bought now I thought I'd walked into a different world
at first. There seemed a huge emphasis on racing, lots of cars seemed to be built with high revving bike engines, massively complex roll cages,
electronic instruments and bucket seats all of which seemed quite alien to the original concept.
Looking beyond this though what i saw was a true on-going development of the same concept, a faithfully continuance of the thread that Colin Chapman
and Graham Nearn pursued in the 1960s. The really important stuff is that some excellent chassis and suspension development work has been done in the
intervening years and of course the practicality of building with parts from currently available donor cars is completely in line with the original
concept. Beyond that- well it is really only the clothes that have changed.
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