By Daniel Cobbs
As we all know, actors never want to work with animals or children. The reason is simple; both are unreliable and unpredictable.
Likewise cars of a certain age which usually come under the heading "classic". For me, driving a car older than my latest download or smaller than my bathtub is about as enticing as root-canal treatment performed by Josef Mengele.
That's not to say I won't drive them - I have a living to make, after all. I know some of my fellow motoring hacks would sell one of their kidneys for the chance to savour the taste of those so-called halcyon days of the motor car.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like a car to have a few niceties about it. I don't expect sat-nav or even electric windows, but I consider seat belts and some sort of heating system the bare minimum requirements - neither of which was found in the 1956 Lotus Eleven Sport I was recently invited to drive.
To be fair, I knew it wouldn't come "suited-and-booted" with a leather and walnut interior. It is, after all, the actual car that was assembled and raced by one the greatest motoring legends of his era: Graham Hill.
It followed Lotus's charismatic and zealous boss Colin Chapman's decision to put all efforts into one race machine for the 1956 season, and the Eleven would be his magnum opus. It reigned in its class until 1959.
There were three versions of the Eleven - Club, Sports and Le Mans - each based on a multi-tubular space-frame chassis with coachwork from the pen of Frank Costin.
Success on the track was immediate and the Eleven attracted many other great drivers, including Chapman himself, Mike Hawthorn and Cliff Allison. Stirling Moss established three international land speed records with an Eleven in 1956.
That same year's Le Mans also saw an Eleven winning its class and finishing seventh overall. Not only was the Lotus quick and agile but it also lasted the distance. All four Elevens finished, Ferrari, Maserati and Aston Martin, well, didn't.
The Eleven was the car that established Lotus as the world's premier manufacturer of small-capacity sports racing cars.
The "Yellow Peril", XJH 902, is steeped in so much history it is impossible to ignore the importance of the role it played in post-war British motor sport. Hill built the car when he was working as a mechanic at Lotus Engineering in Hornsey, London, and raced it in the 1200cc class of the Autosport Production Car championship.
To save money, the then relatively impoverished future World champion would drive it to race meetings, compete in it, and then drive it home. Hill gave his Lotus its race debut at Oulton Park on June 9, 1956; he raced it at eight more meetings that season and in all nine races finished on the podium, winning four.
Tiny open cockpit
The diminutive Lotus seemed quite medieval compared with today's race cars. Shoehorning my portly frame into the tiny open cockpit was a problem, my right leg wouldn't go past the dustbin lid-size steering wheel.
I finally managed to coax my lower limbs deep inside; then they were swallowed-up, out of sight, by the narrowing footwell. It was, to say the least, a tad claustrophobic.
Strangely, though, it felt as if I were wearing the Lotus like a yellow overcoat - a feeling of attachment that's missing in so many modern-day cars.
At the touch of a button on the sparse metal dashboard, the 1172cc Ford engine sprang into life. Getting to grips with a car designed to be a world-beating racer and crammed full of 50-year-old idiosyncrasies really wasn't as difficult as I first imagined.
The Eleven Sport could easily top 160km/h in its 1950 heyday but exploring anywhere near those limits during my drive through the streets of London would not be an option.
Cooked from the neck down
Another problem was that the engine didn't take kindly to being stuck in the congested West End traffic and overheated dramatically, blowing steam from the engine compartment into the cockpit and cooking me from the neck down.
And with the turning circle of a cruise liner, slow speed manoeuvrability isn't one of its greatest attributes - I practically brought the capital to halt doing a six-point turn.
All that aside, and the fact that my favourite cashmere jumper wouldn't now fit a person of considerably reduced stature, my overall impression was quite, unexpectedly, a joyous one.
This Saturday, January 12, it will become lot 218 in an auction at the NEC in Birmingham. It's estimated that it will fetch between £100 000-£150 000 (R1.35 - R2-million), which, on reflection, seems a relatively small price to pay for a car with such an august provenance. - The Independent, London