I know better!
11/01/2025
In short, it's nice when you make an effort to pursue your passion and try to acquire extensive knowledge. For example, I have a great passion for toy cars, have been driving my VW T1 for 34 years and have completely dismantled around four or five Citroën 2CVs (and covered around 200,000 kilometers with them). But I don't know all of it by any means. Then I write about cars every day, researching them with interest, looking for photos, gathering information. Some sources are tapped into and sometimes they are contradictory. And I don't just mean AI queries or Wikipedia entries, which should be treated with caution anyway.
One example from my own close experience, having owned several of them myself, is the years-long, incorrect entry in the Automobilrevue catalog about the body material of the Caterham Super 7 S3. No, even if it was written that way in the AR catalog, the car does not have a plastic body, but an aluminum one - to this day, by the way.
Caterham only built 38 of the Lotus Seven S4 in 1973/74 until the soft top doors ran out...
However, the origin of the entry can be traced back. Graham Nearn, the owner of Seven Cars Ltd. on Caterham Hill south of London, had initially - after taking over the production rights for the Seven from Lotus founder Colin Chapman in May 1973 - continued to build the Lotus Type 60 from June 1973, the Seven S4, which actually had a plastic body. After 38 cars, however, the doors had run out. Nearn wanted to order new ones, but the supplier could only be persuaded to supply them if a large quantity was purchased.
However, an acquaintance of Nearn's said that he should produce the old S3 again after a break of almost four years. This had a simpler top anyway and was much more popular with enthusiasts than the S4. Nearn placed an advertisement in a motorsport magazine in 1974 and later commented: "Since this advertisement that we would build 25 new Seven S3s, the phone has never stopped ringing." Only the AR had apparently not noticed for years that the body material had been changed back to aluminum.
But that's not the point: the question is what sources were available at the time and whether anyone found it necessary to verify them. Apparently not in the case of Caterham. Incidentally, there are also other examples that lead to controversy. For example, the first owners' manuals for the Jaguar XK 120, in which facts are illustrated that were not to be found on a single production vehicle. Presumably the reason for this was that the draughtsman had only seen prototypes before the car was launched and he had implemented the solutions used there in his drawings.
No front vibration damper, a different oil line for the camshafts, a different casting mold on the block to the clutch bell - the first illustration of the XK engine from Jaguar shows differences to reality.
Occasionally, such things become somewhat widespread, contradict real-world experience and, when hotly debated, generate a lot of discussion among experts, enthusiasts and so on. This lively debate is part of our favorite pastime. However, in my experience, even the best expert can sometimes be wrong and not know everything. But - the best thing about it - not knowing gives you the opportunity to learn something new. So even if you're 120 percent sure you're right, it's good to keep an open mind about other facts.
But I don't want to hold my finger up to anyone here. On the contrary: every now and then, when I write nonsense, someone picks up my finger, corrects and clarifies. Because there's no question about it: anyone who has been involved with this or that car for decades certainly knows a few things more than a diligent writer who is talking about Lada today and Bentley tomorrow. Oh yes, and when we walk through the rows of vehicles at a meeting, taking 350 photos and labeling each one, it can sometimes happen that we are a year or two off in terms of vintage. If you spot your car and are not satisfied with the year of manufacture or even the type designation, please show us some mercy and let us know in the comments. Then we'll notice all the more and be confirmed that we have the best and most attentive readers ever!
