martin horrocks
Lotus, the genius of Colin Chapman
Anthony Bruce Colin Chapman was a charismatic and versatile man. In the early XNUMXs he seemed to have it all: still young, he had lived through the British social revolution of the previous decade, which finally replaced nineteenth-century class society with one based on effort and personal merit. He was brilliant, a natural leader born to motivate and compete, who had managed to raise his company almost from scratch to make it a symbol of four F1 world championships and the Indy 500. He himself piloted his jet, He built his yachts, and he was certainly a media star.
He would die relatively soon, in 1982, at the age of one hundred and four. There are many people who believe that it was his participation in the DeLorean project that killed him. A man used to playing to the limit in the fields of engineering and business, he was probably an accomplice in John Z. DeLorean's scam of the Margaret Thatcher government, which subsidized the production of the sports car in the series. Back to the Future in Northern Ireland. Colin Chapman died before trial, but Fred Bushell, an accountant at Lotus, was sentenced to three years in prison; and the judge spoke loud and clear: if he had survived, he would have spent the next ten years behind bars.
[su_note note_color = »# f4f4f4 ″]
The beginnings
Chapman studied Industrial Engineering at the prestigious University College of London and, at the same time, built his first sports car. It was - of course - a special Austin Seven, which he called Lotus (MKI). It was the 1952s and, as the decade progressed, he experimented with Ford engines (MKII), with competition (MKIII) to finally market his first car, the XNUMX Lotus MKVI.
[/ su_note]
[su_note note_color = »# f4f4f4 ″]
Approximately one hundred MKVIs were made through 1957. The model, normally powered by Ford side-valve engines, was the cradle of the magnificent engineer's experimentation with the chassis. spaceframe. Even then, he thought of weight as the enemy, so he gave it an aluminum body. The VI can be considered as the prototype of the Lotus 7 (Seven), the Caterham and the infinity of replicas that exist of them.
The outstanding engineer Mike Costin - previously mentioned - was involved in the development of the MKVI and is a vital figure in the development of the company. As was, perhaps more so, his brother Frank, one of the great technicians, trained in aviation, of aerodynamics of all time. He worked on the new MKVII and endowed it with poetry, with a spectacular aerodynamic body that finished laying the foundations of intelligence, lightness, speed and beauty that define the British brand.
The next car was the Lotus 11 (Eleven), a small racing car that sold quite well and won its class at the 24 Le Mans in 1957 - in addition to taking first place in the Index of Performance of the same race. This model consolidated the good work of Chapman and his team at the international level, which was just now beginning to experiment with the material that would become another of its distinctive signs.
Indeed, fiberglass was used first in the 11, and then blessed in the 14, a small street two-seater better known as the Elite.
[/ su_note]
The first cars
Chapman went far beyond anything that had been done at the height of 1957. Until then, the cars that had been dressed in fiberglass had this bodywork on a metallic chassis, independently; Well, the Englishman presented the first monocoque, on which he built a sensational car of only 500 kg and 75 hp (Coventry-Climax, 1216 cc). Its performance was equivalent to that of a 356-liter Porsche 1.6, although handling and stopping power were astonishingly better.
Finally, F. Costin managed to lower the aerodynamic coefficient to 0.29, in such a way that, combined this with the ridiculous weight and the small engine, the Elite was the most efficient sport, in terms of energy, of its time.
But not everything went as well as it painted because, after all, Lotus was still a small company trying to lead the way in innovation. For one thing, the Elite was very expensive to build, even when it was sold as a kit car. On the other, although it was a fierce competitor capable of winning six times in its class at Le Mans, on the street it was a fragile and unreliable car. The result of all this was that it did not sell in the numbers that Chapman expected, counting only 1030 units, produced between the date of its launch and 1963.
Luckily for the brand, the rest of its models did not have these problems: racing cars and the four-wheeled motorcycle -the Seven- they were keeping the company. Regarding 7, it must be said that for Chapman there came a time when it went out of style, in which, as an engineer, he felt somewhat ashamed to continue marketing it. To such an extent that it got rid of it, prematurely, in 1972, selling the manufacturing rights to what was then its main distributor and who would continue to take advantage of the immortality of this shoe until today. As we will see, it is quite possible that even the former Lotus Seven will survive the Lotus itself.
There were four series of 7. The first of them, manufactured from 1957 to 1960, was dressed in aluminum, while the second (60-68), defined the main lines of the model: Ford OHV engine and fiberglass for the fins and for the bonnet tip. In the third (68-70) they refined the sporty Spartan a bit, and they also made it more expensive. This third generation would be the one that would become the base of the Caterhams, in 1973.
Finally, between 1970 and 1972 Lotus was launched into the production of a fourth evolution, whose body was entirely made of fiber. It was also bigger and more complicated, and while it sold well, it was never really accepted as a successor to the S3. When Caterham took over production, he quickly reverted to the previous model, although the S4 became the basis for cars as familiar to us as the Hispano-Alemán Mallorca.
Elan, the feeling
Meanwhile, on the circuits, Chapman ran one of the best teams in history: the duo formed by the pilot Jim Clark and his Lotus, which dominated both Formula races and the car category during the sixties. sport. They even won at Indianapolis. Lotus was everywhere, and it was the base of choice for Ford of Europe to launch its first performance car, the Lotus Cortina.
Chapman's sneakers were all the rage. They were led by aristocrats, by singers, by actors and actresses and models from the London liberation of the psychedelic decade. Patrick Magoohan was driving a Lotus in the television series The prisoner, while Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg, wore a glamorous Elan in The Avengers. Speaking of this character, the reader should know that, among other things, she wore black leather and did judo before Cat Woman, thereby reinventing the role of women on the small screen and… in society as a whole.
This last model - the Elan - was responsible for the popularity of the brand. Born to replace the troublesome Elite, its beauty was in simplicity. Steel chassis backbone, that welcomed the independent suspension, allowed a passage through a supernatural curve; As for the speed of its direction - it changed course instantly - and the ability to absorb the imperfections of the asphalt, they were also prodigious. It weighed more than the previous model, 685 kg, it is true, but it had a more powerful engine, available from 105 to 130 horsepower, designed by former BRM Harry Mundey and whose development was co-financed by Ford. The car was simply accelerating, turning, and braking in a hitherto unknown manner.
As for the body, it was a two-seater, in fiberglass. Weight was the enemy.
[su_youtube_advanced https=»yes» url='https://youtube.com/watch?v=xqMbxuwI5uc' ]
As can be deduced from what has been written so far, Lotus and Ford maintained a close collaboration. In the sixties the American brand decided to build a reputation for itself through racing, and the English house provided the means to achieve it. In turn, Lotus benefited from financial support and also from technical expertise provided by Ford engineers. There were third parties in contention: Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, who from Cosworth provided the propellants. The Cosworth DFV engine, financed by Ford and first mounted in a Lotus in 1967, would probably go on to become the greatest F1 mechanic of all time.
Strangely, the Elan was not a good racing car at first. The mentioned chassis, which worked miracles on the road, was too flexible for the circuits, which required the development of a special version of the model, the 26R. Still, his sporting successes took place more on a British than international scale. And, truth be told, he never accomplished anything remarkable in endurance races, on or off the island.
There were four series of this little fiber sports car. 8.000 units, produced between October 1962 and 1973. The first and second generation are very similar, and were only offered in a convertible version. The third brought the coupe, in an attempt to increase market share, which featured advanced power windows (!). Finally, the fourth batch did not present major changes, apart from the engine Big valve of 130 horses.
In reality, Chapman was on the hunt for more affluent and sophisticated buyers, in the style of the Porsche 911. Precisely to try to satisfy them, in 1967 he launched the +2 Elan, which increased the dimensions of the original model, in order to make room for the youngest of the house. The +2 was elegant and still technically competent, so it was very well received. Lotus sold 5.200 units between 1967 and 75, and for the latest + 2S variant, the unglamorous sale in kit form was scrapped for the first time.
Therefore, the total production of the Elan model (1962-75), including the 2 + 2 versions, was around 13.000 cars. If we add to this figure 8.300 units of the Europe model, manufactured between 1967 and 1975 and which we will present below, we will have that the English brand was selling about 1.650 cars a year. It was not bad, although the problem was that Porsche was selling 14.000 cars / year, for a much higher price. Lotus may have dominated the circuits, but the street was Porsche's, especially in the United States.
Continue in the Page 3…
