Original Collins Prototype Found

[James Espey <james@xxxx>]

Sascha Skucek passed through Houston today with his pilot car (#20) and
allowed us to get a look at the many differences between his car and the
production car. Quite interesting and similar in many resepcts to the
pre-production car offered at Barrett-Jackson in 1998:

http://www.dmcnews.com/Resource/Prototype/Prototype.html

While he was here, we rummaged through documents that were passed on to us
by Leif Montin, stuff we acquired from Kapac and my own personal collection
of documents. We think we've put together the pieces of the puzzle on the
prototypes now.

(NOTE: The text below refers only to the prototypes built under the
direction of Bill Collins and NOT the pre-production or "pilot" cars like
the ones from the auction above and Sascha's car. He's compiling as much
data as he can on those cars and will publish his findings separately at a
later date.)

According to Bill Collins, there were two prototypes made under his
direction (along with the wooden styling mockup prepared by Giugiaro) before
the project moved to Lotus.

It looks like all of these are now accounted for...the wooden mockup is in
the Transport Museum in near Belfast, and Bill Collins says the second of
the two prototypes he made was shipped off to Lotus in 1978 after hot
weather testing in Phoenix. This car was still at Lotus as recently as 1996,
but all reports now indicate that this car was destroyed by Lotus shortly
thereafter. I personally took a trip to Lotus (at their invitation) last
November and spoke with several who were involved in the original DMC
project (now senior Lotus staffers), and all agreed that the car was
destroyed years ago.

Which leaves just the original Collins prototype, identifiable by the
Citroen 4 cylinder engine. This car was sold at an auction by trustee in
1984 and has remained with the same owner all this time. The car has never
been driven since that time, and remains in storage today. I'm already
working with the owner to secure a time to photograph the car and write an
article on what is now believed to be the first running prototype built and
the only one to now exist. Stay tuned...

James Espey
DMC (Texas)