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Lotus Powered by Ford

Period shot shows Stokes and his Lotus at speed, racing  at Riverside.

I had seen this well-used Lotus 18 sitting in a grumpy little foreign car repair shop hard along Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, California. The guy who owned the shop and the Lotus was named “Buck” something or another as I recall. I kept driving by and looking at that machine every few weeks, and one day I finally stopped to ask after the price (I didn’t have it, of course), and the history of the lime-gold-colored racecar with the gold LeGrand alloy wheels.

Doug Stokes
Doug Stokes

It had been raced on the West Coast by a very fast hairdresser named Ronnie Herrera (who actually contested two or three early Can-Am races). He was said to have been aboard when it was nearly cut in half at a regional race, I believe at Santa Barbara. Anyhow, just after I sold my Dane-Norton in July of 1967, the aunt who had raised me passed away and left me a small inheritance.

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