"The sequence of events for the proto cars was as follows, all the
engines were built at Lotus from parts procured by Lotus usually from
the eventual production supplier. Around 36 of the engines were
shipped to BG for fitting into the proto cars another 8 or 10 engines
went to the likes of Sealed Power in MI, Bay City cams, Rochester
Products, etc for component testing. A further batch of engines, not
sure how many, were built for dyno testing at Lotus. The only engines
that had the type of log book you have were the vehicle engines.
As the cars were built at BG they were allocated to various
engineering groups within GM and to suppliers to the programme. You
will see on most of the build sheets that the cars were allocated to
the engineering group at Warren this is because they had the ultimate
sign off responsibility for the cars, in other words they were all
shipped to Warren prepped for delivery and shipped to there final
destination from there.
Not sure how many but several of the P2 cars were shipped to the UK
for emissions, drivability and performance work. During their life in
the UK the cars would have had their engines and other chassis
components updated as the later level parts/engines became available.
It was not unusual to have changed the engine in a particular vehicle
5 or 6 times, especially the calibration cars. My car (His car was next after mine and is one of the squashed graveyard cars) was shipped to
the UK and back twice. It was used for the hot environment test in 88
then emissions certification and then shipped to the UK, shipped back
for some work in 90 and eventually was used for oil consumption tests
in the UK in 91 fitted with a production level engine. It met its end
at the beginning of 92.
All of the proto and production test/dyno engines that were removed
went to the scrap. That's what makes your car so remarkable, it is as
BG built it. I don't know of any other P2 mule as they were called
that has survived let alone as original as yours.
Geoff
