The Lotus 7 has a wonderfully piratical beginning. In the late 1950’s, The British Empire had a huge tax on automobiles…so much so that Colin Chapman was convinced that one of the reasons his latest $1,400 car was not selling well was the cost of the tax. So he goes to the ministry of motor vehicles and asks “What is a car?” 

“Well,” they reply, “They have motors, wheels, fenders and a steering wheel”

So ol’ Colin goes back to his shop, and removes the engine, fenders, wheels & tyres, and steering wheel off his latest creation, the seventh car he ever built (that was remarkably similar to the sixth car he built, the Lotus 6!). He sells these items, not as the “Lotus 7” but as car parts…thus avoiding any possible taxation on his little 2 seat, 40 hp, 900 # wonder puppy, and starting what would, ironically, become the beginning of an unprecedented 50 year production run [in one form or another] that continues to this day, in part, because of Pirates like me, who don’t like being extorted, either by mobsters or civil servants (who are neither civil nor servile).

Super 7s are made largely out of Irony.

A Lotus Seven met issues of liberty head on in The Prisoner, a 1960's British T.V. show in which our hero drives his Super 7 to work to resign his position as a spy, only to wake up later as a prisoner in “The Village”. That is one of the very few places a Lotus 7 [or issues of freedom, for that matter] shows up in pop culture.

I guess if you have ever driven a 7, or a motorcycle, or some other form of recreational vehicle you already understand what one has to do with the other, at least on some level.