Classic car spotting this week.

Chevrolet El Camino SS

242k!!! Wow!!! Wonder if it's some kinda record for a Lotus...

Nope. I have seen someone's records of ~350k miles in a Europa, and I know the owners of at least two high mileage Sevens.

Those higher mileages on old an old Lotus should be of no real surprise as their basic components were from many ordinary production cars and by before very long knowledge of how to deal with any problems associated with those bits exclusive to Lotus will've been nutted out by specialists and enthusiasts on how to overcome those reliability shortfalls.
Armed with knowledge any problems will've been solved with the passage of time.
Given the desirability of Lotus cars with the enthusiast market combined with the resulting higher corresponding values, as well as the fact that the bodies wont rust away like steel would make more of the cars economically viable to repair or restore than many of the humble cars that they were based on.
Even later cars from the Eclat, Elite and Esprit era with their Lotus made engines and lot more unique to lotus components will by now have several specialists with knowledge of what goes wrong and how to fix it properly, this is certainly true of the later Elise models with engines that were based on the MGF / TF powerplants.
Of course later cars with would have no such concerns with their Toyota based engines

That is not to say that maintaining these cars is always gonna be cheap, but with care by specialists or knowledgeable and skilled enthusiast owners these cars can't be reliable or achieve high mileages is nonsense

Like a lot of horror stories of unreliability, they are endlessly repeated down the pub by know all/know nothing experts, to try and impress any poor bastard who'll listen without any actual experience of working on the cars, or even ever having driven them!
Even a lot of so called mechanics who've only spent their working life on basic bread & butter shopping trolley cars and who will recoil with horror when confronted with any thing different to their humdrum boring working life will spew forth this same bullshit to try mask their ignorance and look like they actually know something worthwhile.

I see its not adjusted for Temperature and Isochronism but it does appear to be adjusted for 10 positions!

We had a MG midget race car, it held the under1300cc lap records at many tracks and won the state hillclimb championship.
It was a bloody good little car

My Google search came up with nothing.

Vintage buses are a popular item if you look up Flickr's photo website you can waste a day or 2 going down the vintage bus rabbit hole ( I did that a few months ago) some truly weird and wonderful buses from the cart horse days and early combustion engine days but alas not a single Waltham did I spot though there are many similar to it of the same era.

I did some searching too, and also came up with nothing. There are a few things about it that make me think it's an old, poss up to 1930s, chassis fitted with a modern-ish, <20yo, body.

Artillery wheels look too small in diameter and the tyres too deep in section for something with no front brakes.

Chassis dumb-irons have corrosion pits under the paint but body parts are smooth and undamaged.

All that chrome plating! For the age it purports to be that should be nickel plate -- which is what the headlamps appear to be.

Radiator fin density looks later than I think it should.


Commercial vehicles are not my thing but I have driven a 1904 car on the London-Brighton Run and 1913 and 1919 cars on local roads, all belonging to a friend of mine.

I don't think ViN numbers were a thing back when that was made

A little background to Harry.