And Greg gets to the heart of the matter - again. I'm reminded of a guy in Seattle who found a set of original number plates from a Lotus 47 in the desk drawer of his shop...

This was during the psycho vintage racing days of the late '80s, when anything with provenance was going for out-of-sight prices. Seems that he had worked on (or raced himself?) this particular 47 back when it was new. The 47 was the race-special version of the Europa, with lots of goodies, and they had cheated it into a stock road racing class by putting plain-Jane Europa plates on it.

It ended its racing career in a big wrech at Seattle International Raceay (now Pacific Raceways), in which it was so damaged (it burned, I believe) that its carcass was simply pushed over the bank on the backside, down toward the railroad track.

Anyway, over beers one evening, the subject of this car - and how valuable it would have been if it had survived - came up. He reached into his desk and said (in essence), "You mean this car?"

Since one can buy every single part for pretty much any Lotus ever made, that's precisely what they did. Not a single additional piece of the original "car," beyond those plates, survived but to this day, someone has "Lotus 47 XXXXXX" and is loving it. I understand that they did go prospecting for the wreck and found some scrap metal, but none of it made it into the final build.

We DON'T CARE about provenance. We just care whether or not a car adheres to the specifications it's supposed to.

K