Two Gears, Eighteen Hours: A Lotus Europa at Daytona 1978
Published in Drive Tastefully Magazine Issue #5
February 3rd 1978. Daytona 24 Hours. 8pm. The sunlight faded a while ago and there’s nine more hours of darkness. Hirum Cruz, co-driver of the No.55 Lotus Europa, is looking for his car. It’s been left somewhere “out by the hairpin,” he was told. Abandoned by his co-driver, who, from exhaustion and frustration, shut down the engine and rolled to a stop.
Nighttime at Daytona is a special experience: part of the track is flood-lit bright as day, with the rest left dark as the seafloor. The little red Lotus is out there somewhere. Hopefully not hidden in the voids between floodlights. Hirum keeps walking, helmet in hand, fighting panic. They’ve brought this car to Daytona twice before but haven’t yet reached the finish. He’ll be damned if he lets that happen again. And after half a mile, through the paddock and past concessions, squeezing between camper vans, though spectators’ barbecues, and even jogging across the live track a few times, Hirum finds the lifeless GTU car. Partly eclipsed in darkness, the contrast giving the illusion that the Lotus is sliced cleanly in two. He climbs in and starts the car.
Today, this multi-time Daytona runner sits in Los Angeles, having recently undergone total restoration to its 1978 Daytona spec. The history of the race car is like many others of that era: starting life as a privately-owned, street-driven sports car then called into service as a weekend warrior’s race weapon. This Lotus was purchased from a Miami dealer as a burgundy 1974 John Player Special, fitted with Lotus’s Twin Cam engine and a Renault gearbox. After only a few months on the road, the sports car's potential as a race car became too much to resist. Many Europas made the transition, and in no small part to Colin Chapman’s desire to give his buyers the sensation of piloting a formula car on the way to work. One could say that the Europa itself is a gateway drug to a racing addiction more life-changing than any powder.
That’s how Hirum Cruz got involved. From Hirum,
“Emiliano [the car’s owner] had lots of experience in air cooled engines but zero knowledge on the British Fords. I had been road racing the little British cars since 1970, so I had gained some experience along the way. Finally, I let go of my Porsche addiction and started on the Lotus Idea for enduro racing.”
After a few SCCA races and an outing at Daytona in ‘76, the team determined the car’s original Twin Cam engine wasn’t up to the task, nor was the Renault gearbox, since the running gear was meant for road use. So, with an IMSA GTU rule book in-hand, out came the stock parts and in went a 1600 Ford BDA engine and Hewland FT200 gearbox. Rear hub carriers and other suspension components were swapped with Formula B bits and otherwise reinforced to handle double the car’s original power and the abuse of 24-hour competition. To get that power to the ground in an era before big wings on GT cars, the rear got 9” wheels and cartoonishly wide 914GT flares to cover them. With that, the diminutive Lotus came a step closer to being as wide as it was long.
For endurance racing, the Europa was equipped with fog lights that jutted up from the front boot like two dinner plates, and a large amber dome was bolted to the roof to help with identifying the car at night. By then, of course, the interior was completely removed, save for the beautifully lacquered walnut dash.
In its current pristine state, one would never guess this Lotus has sat derelict since it was last driven in anger, at Daytona, in 1978. Pictures too small to print here, show the car covered in dust and the detritus of decades in storage. The engine and gearbox scavenged, the rubber decayed, the fiberglass cracks spidering out like the orb weaver’s webs hanging above it.
The Europa passed through several owners over the next 38 years, but finally, in 2016, No.55 found its way to architect Christof Jantzen, whose affinity for lesser-known and quirky vehicles softened his heart to the long-dormant race car. Based in Los Angeles, Jantzen traveled across the country several times to source the correct parts and then hired respected restorer Graham Collins to undertake the work.
Daytona 24 of today is scarcely recognizable to participants from 40 years ago. It is attended by factory-owned or well-funded private teams, and features factory-built race cars that are balanced within each class to level the playing field. Drivers are restricted to 4 hours in the car at any one time and they will rarely drive more than eight hours over the course of a 24-hour race. In the 70s, however, the rulebook was significantly thinner. Motivated amateurs with the skills and the will could build a car and try to qualify for an IMSA race like the Daytona 24. Insurance salesmen, engineers, and business executives shared the track with the world’s most famous drivers. And the paddock itself was just as informal: a factory-backed Porsche 917 might be wedged in an open garage beside a privateer’s Mazda RX-3, for instance. It wouldn’t be at all unusual to see a mechanic, wearing only jeans and a cowboy hat, squatting over gearbox internals spread across a bedsheet on the ground.
Racing at Daytona that year was divided between three categories: GTX, which was IMSA’s equivalent to the FIA’s Group 5, and GTO and GTU, which featured cars over 2.5L and under 2.5L, respectively. At 1600cc, the little Lotus would have been well below the maximum GTU displacement, but the car’s 1650 pounds and excellent aerodynamics would help where it lacked in sheer grunt.
Hurley Haywood was there that day in 1978, as well as David Hobbs, Dick Barbour, Bob Bondurant, Johnny Rutherford, Ronnie Petersen, and Jim Downing, as well as many other notables. Among the other GTU competitors: a Lancia Stratos, an MGB GT, several Mazda RX-3s, and Datsun 260Zs, a 914/6, and more than a few 911s--all of which Hirum Cruz would have seen race past as he searches the track for the car his co-driver abandoned.
Once in, Hirum has no problem starting the Lotus but does have an issue getting it in gear. His co-driver (and car owner) Emiliano Rodriguez had reported difficulty shifting. Cruz limps the car back to the pits and inspection reveals a failure in the clutch’s hydraulic system and loss of 1st, 3rd, and 4th gears due to forced shifts. For the first four hours, Rodriguez had battled the car while fighting to hold position in the field. This alone was no small feat. And for those familiar with vintage racing today, even just 30 minutes in an unaided, completely analog GT car is mentally and physically exhausting. Add to that a struggling car, the stress of driving in the slowest class of a multi-class race, and the weariness of hour upon hour of noise and repetition, few people could do what the Lotus’ first driver accomplished. Stopping the car on track, pummeled by the struggle, convinced the race was irretrievable, most of us would have quit long before Rodriguez.
But there are exceptional people, and there are people who defy description. Whether it be from an excess of enthusiasm, sheer grit, or both, Hirum Cruz sets out alone that night, in a broken race car, prepared for an 18-hour fight.
He quickly finds the car’s new limits, timing shifts from 2nd to 5th and back again, over and over, lap after lap. The same scenes repeated every 2 minutes or so. For those familiar with Daytona, for Cruz, Turn 1 itself would have been more intense than an entire lap of most tracks: dropping off the banking at 150mph in 5th, controlling the bucking, sliding Lotus under threshold braking while looking for his apex ahead and watching out for a faster GTO or GTX car screaming up from behind. All this, while waiting to shift straight into 2nd from 5th, the timing of which, if not perfect, would guarantee a lockup and spin. It’s difficult to imagine 400 laps of this.
Hirum rests when he can; so exhausted that at fuel stops he hides in the bathroom to sneak a sandwich while the crew pretends to repair something so race officials wouldn’t retire it. Apparently the Lotus is as stubborn as Hirum, and doesn’t suffer any more significant problems through the race. The human and the machine continue together through the night and into the day, falling further behind the leader but remarkably gaining ground on many others, including the great Hurley Haywood in his 935. After 24 hours and 402 laps, Hirum Cruz finished the 1978 running of the Daytona 24 in 39th place, one ahead of Haywood.
Just like any vintage race car, driving the No.55 Europa today is like reading a history book. The car on track is more nervous than most, and takes some mastery; its rearward bias requiring a plate-spinning dance between understeer and oversteer. Though it’s doubtful faster than a good Spec Miata, your sense of speed is heightened by the fact that the driver’s eye line is roughly even with the door handles of the cars beside it. With only inches of air between the asphalt and the seat; your helmet hard up against the roll cage, and a seating position more like a contemporary prototype, it’s hard to imagine this was ever driving the streets of Miami like any ordinary road car. Because this is most definitely a race car now. One look at those wheel arches should erase any doubt.
Now the No.55 Lotus Europa preserves an earlier era in freshly-painted amber. Stories like the one it tells remind us that, at its best, automotive competition is less about victory than about spirit. Less about big money than about big goals. That may be a cliché but it doesn’t change its truth. And here’s another cliché: an object is only as valuable as its narrative. If that’s true too, this little red Europa says as much about a golden era of racing as the Porsche-backed Brumos 935 that won that day.