Our June 1960 road test: “On the road, one of the most remarkable things about the car is the lightness of the rack-and-pinion steering, and, in fact, all the other controls. A base price of $5700 in our 1960 test works out to about $40,000 today.
Our testing reveals a 0-to-60 time of 8.2 seconds and a top speed of 123 mph. Powered by a single-overhead-cam Coventry Climax 1.2-liter engine making 102 hp, the fiberglass Elite weighs in at 1705 pounds. To make enough money to keep racing, Chapman develops his first dedicated production car, the Elite, which features a lightweight fiberglass body and structure. The price for all this excitement is $2795, or about $20,000 in today’s dollars. ) Top speed is a low yet still plenty thrilling 81 mph.
(As a modern comparison, that’s barely quicker than the Smart ForTwo, a car that is not perfect for blowing away anything but may be perfect for blowing up. We say of the 1300-pound 7 America: “There’s nothing like it for blowing away the cobwebs of a city office.” Although the handling is praised, acceleration from the 48-hp, 948-cc four-cylinder with a scant 52 lb-ft of torque leaves plenty to be desired-60 mph comes up in just over 12 seconds with the quarter-mile arriving in 19. C/D ’s first test of the 7 comes in June 1960. (Our resident Brit describes trials as “a peculiar form of racing that times cars through treacherous off-road sections, often uphill, often muddy, and always abusive toward the car.”) This diminutive 15-hp car scores a number of wins and provides enough prize money to develop Chapman’s next car.Ĭhapman modifies another Austin Seven for trials racing and dubs it the Lotus Mark II, retroactively christening his previous car the Mark I.Ĭhapman founds the Lotus Engineering Company to build race cars, the first of which is the Mark IV trials car.Įssentially a formula car for the road, the lightweight, quick, and responsive Mark VII-known today simply as the 7-starts production in 1957 and continues on today as the Caterham 7. He modifies a 1928 Austin Seven for local trials races. What follows is a history of the world’s lightest-car company, from the very first homebuilt ambler to today’s newest sports car, the Evora.Īnthony Colin Bruce Chapman graduates from engineering school. Although gone from racing’s top echelon for many years-2010 marks Lotus’s reentry after a 16-year absence from Formula 1-the company’s (occasionally uncertain) history on the street continues uninterrupted from the late ‘40s through today. This is a function of focus: Like Enzo Ferrari, Lotus founder Colin Chapman started building road cars primarily as a means of feeding a racing habit, and for many years, Lotus was one of Ferrari’s chief rivals on the racetrack. Lotus has never been a big car company, as measured by the size of its cars or the scope of its sales.
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