It must be summer — British convertibles are out in force these days. In the last two weeks alone I've seen two Triumphs (a TR7 and a TR3), three MGs (two Bs and a TC), a Jaguar XKE, an Austin Healey and a Morgan (though the last was on Route 22 in New York State, a great road for sports cars). There's a Lotus Elise around town, too, but I haven't seen it recently — and being bright yellow, it's hard to miss.

There's a Lotus in my garage, too... kind of. It's actually a 1998-built Caterham Super Seven, but to all intents and purposes it's a 1957 Lotus Seven, because Caterham Cars, a long-time Lotus dealer, bought the rights to the Seven in 1973. It's a ridiculous car — tiny, impractical, noisy, uncomfortable, not all that reliable — but you can't help loving the darn thing, because it's so basic. (Brain teaser of the day: why would England, famous for its rain and general bad weather, produce so many wonderful open-top cars?) Colin Chapman — the founder of Lotus, designer of the Seven, and an aeronautical engineer — essentially wanted to build automobiles that flew... and win races, because Formula One was his first love. He believed in handling, not horsepower, and his devotion to lightness was so great he spent more time removing parts from his cars than adding them.

And that's one reason for the longevity of the Seven design — because it's simple enough to be built by auto idiots like myself. ("Auto Idiot" was, in fact, the working title of the book I wrote about the construction process, Roadster: How (and Especially Why) a Mechanical Novice Built a Sports Car from a Kit.) True gearheads have finished building kit Sevens in six weeks; I took 14 months, working part-time, because I tried to follow the instructions to the letter, and had no intuitive sense of what was "right," from a laws-of-physics point of view. And yes: since I was writing a book, the more I screwed up, the better stories I got... and the more I realized I was not a "natural" at mechanics.

Which is the main reason I decided to build the car — after a year of legal education (chronicled in my first book, Anarchy and Elegance: Confessions of a Journalist at Yale Law School), I realized that people could change, or at least develop. In law school I felt myself taking a new direction in life, altering my priorities, and building a kit Seven (which I bought from Sevens & Elans, Ltd. in Massachusetts) gave me the chance to test, more consciously, whether we really are "stuck" with ourselves, whether older dogs like myself could learn new tricks. I'd hold my own "nature vs. nurture" experiment, see whether I could grow a part of my brain that had been sorely under-used.

Though my Seven is legal, registered and runs well, and the problems I've had (blown hoses, a carburetor fire) weren't "build" problems, it's clear, nonetheless, I'll never be a real "car guy." (The late Graham Nearn, the founder of Caterham, was one; he put Sevens on the road for 36 years, far longer than Lotus itself.) I had the willpower, for awhile, but not the interest, the dedication, the ambition: I liked the intellectual problem-solving and working with my hands and racing the Seven at Lime Rock Park (note that Labor Day means vintage racing there!!!)... but at bottom I was a car-world travel writer. I wanted to visit an exotic (to me) mindset, then return to my own, with some good stories and, possibly, a little more knowledge (and self-knowledge). I do understand car guys better, now... but there are so many other work-and-hobby cultures I've yet to spend time with (Architecture! Engineering! Social work!) that it seems faint-hearted to get immersed in just one, or two.

For all that, though, the Seven is my most prized possession, because I built it with my own hands. Indeed, that very phrase started the project. In the late 1970s, right after college, I discovered the classic-but-bizarre English television series "The Prisoner," in which Patrick McGoohan plays a British spy kidnapped and imprisoned in a quaint, artificial community called "The Village" (the peculiar tourist resort of Portmeirion, Wales) for resigning his position. The 17 shows are an extended duel — between McGoohan, dehumanized by being dubbed "Number Six" and who constantly tries to escape, and his captors, personified by a revolving cast of autocratic, charming "Number Twos" who try to break his spirit. In a number of episodes, Number Six does get away — temporarily, of course — and in one, sees his old London car... a Lotus Seven, being driven by a woman (who will betray him, naturally, since she's the new Number Two), to whom he says about the car, "I know every nut and bolt and cog — I built it with my own hands!"

I was hooked — on the series, on the Seven, on the constant battle "The Prisoner" depicted between individual and group, original and copy, surface and substance. And the Caterham Seven captured those conflicts nicely: it looked expensive but was cheap in origin (it was originally marketed as a "student car"), its old design masked its being built with new parts, it looked fast but was powered by engines developed as fire pumps, such as the famous Coventry Climax. (That motor featuring the naked Lady Godiva — auto racers drove fast, the joke goes, because they were chasing her.) My Seven is powered by an engine used in the Ford Pinto (though bored out to 1700 cc, from 1600) — but to very different effect, because the Seven handles so well. If the "curve ahead" sign says "25," I know I can take it at 50 (but please, don't tell anyone).

September — yeah, there are a few more weeks in the sports-car season before I put the Seven back on trickle-charge. One thing's for sure: I'm not going to fashion a Plexiglas top for it, as one guy I know did, so he could drive his Seven year 'round — in Massachusetts, even. No, I'm not a car nut, just a fair-weather fan.