Mintle took his Lotus behind the Iron Curtain; also has a rare Barracuda

In 1970, Ron Mintle took a road trip in his new 1970 Lotus Élan behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ through the Eastern Bloc countries. At 2 a.m. in Czechoslovakia, Mintle was woken by the pounding fists of Soviet Army soldiers on his hotel room door. He was unlucky to have entered the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic two days before the student uprisings on the second anniversary of the 1968 Warsaw Pact Invasion. They placed him with other Westerners in protective custody to prevent adverse publicity of Westerners being harmed during the action.

Mintle’s biggest fear was not about his life, he said, but...