They won the constructors four times before Lotus ran out of money for Formula 1. Colin Chapman, the father of Lotus cars, never ever considered reducing the passion. Every car that walked out the Lotus stable was built with the same passion as that of a race car. He always stressed two things. One, driving a car as fast as possible is all about maintaining the highest possible levels of acceleration in the direction you want, and the other, to make a car go faster we must add lightness!!!
While other performance bred cars looked at bigger engines, Lotus looked at a fiberglass monocoque chassis and not just the body. A small and an efficient engine,Suspensions derived from a Lotus Formula 2 car, and an elegant weight saving strut at the rear. The result was a light, fantastic, so nimble and precise that it gave road users an insight in to racing car dynamics. On the race track it was no doubt, a giant killer.
I stand here, after 40 years and still proclaim that if you put a 170 hp lotus Elise on a track with a 350 plus Hp Ferrari that costs thrice as much and add in a few turns in the track, the Lotus will stay undefeated. Please hail to the passion of the Lotus!
Hi…am I glad I stumbled onto this blog!
the lotus elise an astoundingly underrated car, even among enthusiasts …in fact that symbolises how underrated lotus itself is (among non-british enthusiasts at least) hardly anyone is aware that most engineering advances that today’s cars have (and most of which are now officially banned from formula one) were engineered in the lotus camp the monocoque chassis…active suspension…both leading to the nimble chassis with wheels always pointing in the direction the steering wanted them to..no matter what the cornering speed and what the track conditions…
as for your earlier posts…i am not that much of a maserati fan, and i firmly disapprove of your favorable comparision of the maserati with the ferrari daytona..to me the ferrari daytona is unsurpassed in physical beauty…and i often say this …heck if i was to marry a car, it would be the daytona….but then to each his own…and the audi quattro..well another example of pure engineering brilliance… often misunderstood and dismissed at the outset, but restored to its rightful osition after a WRC title….and what a beautifully apt name too…have a lot to say about the mustang and the ford GT, but then maybe some other time…