Greetings all from NZ where we are trying to trace the background of a Lotus 22 that has lived here since late November 1963. The car is still in New Zealand and all subsequent owners can be accounted for - but what we're trying to do is figure out what happened in the first 12-14 months of the car's life.
Some brief background:
1. The car was imported into NZ by top local driver Roly Levis. Roly had placed a 'wanted Lotus 22' ad in the Sept 20 1963 Autosport and within nine weeks his new toy arrived at Auckland wharf.
2. In an interview I did with Roly in May 2012, some 17 months before he died, he confirmed that the car was purchased off Jonathan Williams - as confirmed in the excellent Adam Cooper book on Piers Courage.
3. This would seem to stack up because the car arrived in black and red livery as raced by Williams in 1963. Indeed Roly continued with that livery on the 22 (and all three Brabhams that followed as it happens) and current the owner is restoring it in the Williams/Levis colour scheme.
4. The car arrived without a chassis plate but the frame is marked '22/47'. It must have once had a chassis plate because it raced across Europe and therefore moved from country to country thus requiring ID beyond a number on the frame.
5. Our departed friend David McKinney originally had the car marked as 'ex-Lucienbonnet' on account of his assumption that chassis plate numbers corresponded with frame numbers. David subsequently discovered this was not the case and so that avenue turned out to be a cul-de-sac.
6. There has been a reference to the possibility that Williams raced a 'Roy Thomas copy' in 1963 FJ but that doesn't stack up with a frame marked '22/47'. We suspect that if Jonathan raced a Lotus 22 copy, then it is likely to have been the F3 22 he raced in 1964.
Jonathan Williams first raced his FJ Lotus 22 at Solitude in late July 1963 and what we would dearly love to discover is the following:
Who was the original owner of frame 47 and was that person the driver of this car in 1962? and
What had the car been doing since the end of 1962 and the Solitude race in July 1963?
We know it is a longshot that anyone will know the answers to these questions for certain. I'm not sure if Jonathan's 1963 'mechanic' Sir Francis can recall any of this, given we are going back over half a century. Short of FW, the best place for a longshot such as this is undoubtedly TNF so fingers crossed.
Finally a big thank you to Roger (no relation) Clark and Milan Fistonic for the time they have put in trying to help us solve this. Sadly we are closing in on the first anniversary of the passing of Jonathan who would have had been able to answer all of these questions had the owner got started on the 'dig' earlier!