Race Car No. 12 — "Eleanor"

Lotus built five factory race cars: two Type 105s for the 1990 SCCA World Challenge, rebuilt afterwards to the more developed Type 106 specification, and three Type 106s constructed new for the LotuSport IMSA campaign. This is the car that today wears No. 12, and that the people who have kept it call “Eleanor.”

What the register establishes

• Decals — No. 12, as the car is currently presented.
• Type — 105/106. Built as a Type 105 for the 1990 SCCA World Challenge and later rebuilt to Type 106 specification.
• VIN — SCCFC20851HF65798
• Last known location — New Jersey, as of 2023.

What it does not

The record of the five race cars is thinner than the record of the twenty road cars, and it is worth being plain about why. The road cars were sold, so each left a paper trail — a window sticker, a title, an owner. The race cars were campaigned, and a race team’s paperwork records car numbers, not chassis numbers.

A car number is not a chassis. Decals were swapped between events and between seasons. That single fact is the reason this page is short.

• Which races this car contested. LotuSport’s surviving records are organised by driver and by car number, and the numbers moved. Until a chassis can be tied to a car number season by season, its race record cannot honestly be written.
• Its ownership chain, other than where it is now.

The paperwork that would settle all of it may still exist. Writing in Lotus ReMarque in August 2005, Kevin McGovern of Yesteryear Motorsports recorded that the team’s purchase from Jack Ansley included the “original bills of sale for the five cars from Lotus UK.” Five cars, five bills of sale, naming chassis. Finding them is the most valuable outstanding question on this project.

If you know this car, or hold anything that bears on it, please get in touch.