A Celebration of Fast: 1973 Lotus Europa Type 74 Twin Cam Special

November 13, 2014
Story By
John McCabe

In 1972, Lotus won its fifth Grand Prix (Formula 1) World Championship in a decade. In order to celebrate, and to remind car buyers around the world who was the perennial world champion team, they created a special edition of their Europa car - the Lotus Europa Special. The race team’s cars were painted black with gold pinstriping, so they painted the limited edition run of 200 cars using the same color combination.

The problem was that the world’s hunger wasn’t satiated with merely 200 of the “John Player Special” edition Europas. So, in 1973, having won yet another world championship, Lotus made more of the Europa Specials, this time with a redesigned rear and without the gold pinstriping. Later models were even painted colors not available on a 1919 Ford Model T. Unlike its predecessors, the Twin Cam Special includes a mid-ship mounted Lotus twin cam engine which consists of a 1557 cc Ford block, topped by Lotus heads (as opposed to the previous Renault engines) mated to a five-speed manual transmission. A pair of Dell’Orto carbs aspirates the engine and four-wheel independent suspension with Chapman struts completes the package. Along with the more powerful motor and transmission, the car boosted the brakes a bit, but stuck with the 13” wheels. A total of 3,130 of the Specials were produced.

One of those now belongs to Roman Artymyshyn of Flemington, NJ who found one about 12 years ago in less-than-awesome condition. Although this car wasn’t in disastrous disrepair, it did require a lot of maintenance to get it to where it is today. Most of the car is stock, but Artymyshym admits to having installed a new aluminum radiator in the front of the rear-engine car. That is one of the flaws that Artymyshyn finds in the design of this sports car, because the occupants of the passenger compartment can feel the heat flowing from one end of the vehicle to the other.

Before he purchased the car, its condition, according to Artymyshyn, was best described as “beat up.” Now, it is a fun little car which he states is, “Quick enough to get me out of trouble…and into it.” Today the car is a thing of beauty, and not only on the outside. The engine compartment shines from the cooling tank on the right to the Dells on the left and the interior is immaculate. Artymyshyn says that the car is a blast to drive — and that’s what really matters. Watch him tell more in the video below:

A Celebration of Fast: 1973 Lotus Europa Type 74 Twin Cam Special

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