Lotus Land

Two Remain. One is the patriarch of his craft and a national hero. He lives in baronial seclusion in a small northern Italian city, where the multiple dramas of his life have unfolded. The other, 30 years his junior, is at the height of his powers in a field of endeavor that soon will leave him the only pure, classically complete automobile manufacturer on the face of the earth.

The old man is Enzo Ferrari, Il Commendatore of the vast, legend-laden automobile works that bears his name and his adopted crest, the flying horse of Maranello. The younger is Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, renowned design genius and impresario of Lotus Cars Limited of Norwich, England. The men are unique in a world where cars are almost exclusively conceived and manufactured by committees and where vehicular distinction is being washed away in a sea of government regulation and mass-production practicalities. The age of the cookie-cutter car is upon us, making the presence of men such as Ferrari and Chapman even more visible, because they alone carry the heritage of the purist car builder--the man whose personality dominates the products that issue from his factory.

In the beginning, it was all that way. Benz, Daimler, Renault and Peugeot built automobiles from whole cloth, according to their own hard notions about everything from how many cylinders their cars' engines should have to how the cowling should be curved to how the advertising should read. They were part engineers, part technological artisans, and from their exclusive ranks came the likes of Ettore Bugatti, Vincenzo Lancia, the Duesenberg brothers, Messrs. Rolls and Royce, whose best efforts were as much 20th Century art forms as they were transportation devices.

The Great Depression and the Great War that followed ended most of those alliances of art and technology. Those pioneers who survived were for the most part swept away by modern economic realities and the hard truth that lay in the common-parts bins of mass production. Ferdinand Porsche, racked by conflict and imprisonment following the war, hung on until his death in 1952. His eldest son persists but has been forced to align his company with the Volkswagen conglomerate in order to ensure its survival. Even Ferrari, now in his 80th year, has had to seek financial refuge under the massive umbrella of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Fiat). And that, in a sense, leaves Colin Chapman and his Lotus cars as the sole survivors. To be a classic automotive impresario, the following qualifications should be met: (1) The individual must control all aspects of his operation, including finance, design, engineering and marketing; (2) his products must use their own specially created components and not engines, chassis, etc., purchased from other vendors; (3) he must carry his marque into battle in major motor-sports competition.

At present, only Ferrari and Chapman begin to fit the parameters. And now, as Il Commendatore slips deeper into the thick mists of legend and his company becomes a more solidly integrated division of Fiat, only Chapman and his band of English artisans remain.

Chapman is doing beautifully. His three outré passenger cars are selling at a profitable rate and 1978 saw his brilliant JPS79 Grand Prix car dominate Formula I competition for Lotus while carrying one of his drivers (Mario Andretti) to a sixth World Drivers' Championship in 20 years of competition.

This lean, rather aloof man drifted into the automobile business with a civil engineer's degree, earned at the University of London in 1945. It is said that in 1949, he borrowed £25 from his then-fiancée, present-wife Hazel in order to fabricate his first car. Optimistically dubbed the Mark I, it was a much-chopped and leaned-down 1930 Austin Seven saloon intended for competition in smalltime amateur trials. During that postwar period, England was swarming with motor-sports activity and it seemed that behind every closed garage door, some form of tiny racing car was being welded up from steel tubing and various passenger-car bits.

Chapman's first machines were fabricated for himself, on a purely part-time basis, while he tried to build a future in the engineering department of British Aluminium. Then, in 1952, he created the Mark 6, a cleverly designed sports racing car that could be purchased in kit form and would accommodate a number of small-displacement power plants, including the 1100-c.c. converted fire-pump engine built by Coventry Climax. Over 100 Mark 6s were built, turning Chapman into a veritable manufacturing titan in the British cottage industry of motor racing.

He quit British Aluminium in 1955 to enter the car business full time and made his first major splash two years later with a vastly improved version of the Mark 6 called the Mark 7. This lean, lithe little roadster, with its tubular frame and impertinent fiberglass front fenders, was an instant hit; and before production ceased 16 years later, over 3000, in various permutations, had been sold. Modified versions of the 7 and the super 7 are still being raced and a small English company is now manufacturing replicas. In 1958, Chapman had grown sufficiently to enter his first Lotus in Grand Prix competition. It was a front-engine design built on the verge of the massive revolution that was to see all racing cars carry their power plants behind the driver in a "mid-engine" configuration. The car was not successful, prompting the Mark 18 two seasons later. This automobile was a pyrotechnic display of Chapman's engineering genius. Gossamer light and dainty, with a masterfully supple independent suspension system, the Mark 18 brought Chapman his first Grand Prix victory (the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix, Stirling Moss driving). That year brought an added bonus. A Mark 18 driver rose out of the Formula Junior ranks who was marked for stardom. His quiet, reflective nature dovetailed perfectly with Chapman's basic reticence. He was a smallish, round-faced Scotsman named Jim Clark.

Before Clark died against a stout German tree trunk on April 7, 1968, he and Chapman formed one of the most enduring relationships in the history of motor sports. By the time this 32-year-old superstar died so suddenly--and so mysteriously--on the rain-swept Hockenheim Ring, he had won 24 Grand Prix races for Lotus, a number of major sports-car events and the 1965 Indianapolis 500. Two world championships (1963 and 1965) had come to him at the wheels of the bright-green, cigar-shaped Lotus cars. Yet Clark's death renewed the single blight that Chapman has carried through his career: that in his search to pare unnecessary weight from his vehicles, he has sacrificed durability and strength. He had once been quoted as observing that the perfect racing car was the one that fell apart as it crossed the finish line (implying that the optimum design was one that was so spare that it fulfilled its engineering intent and nothing more).

He pressed on, following the loss of his friend and ace driver. A month later, his brilliant Mark 56s appeared at Indianapolis--four-wheel-drive turbine-powered wonders that were finally banned because they threatened to make every other car at the track obsolete.

Behind him were such classic passenger cars as the pretty Mark 14 fiberglass Elite coupe (1959) and the Mark 26 Elan roadster, probably the finest-handling sports car of its time. Chapman was also credited with the epochal Mark 25 Grand Prix car, the first fully monocoque modern racing car and a car that not only won 25 Grand Prix races but revolutionized motor-sports design philosophies. In 1966, he moved to the small village of Hethel, near Norwich, building his factory beside a World War Two American B-17 base once commanded by movie star Jimmy Stewart.

As passenger-car production flourished, Chapman's Formula I machines brought the world championship to Graham Hill in 1968 and to the brash Austrian Jochen Rindt in 1970. But Rindt's victory was again torn by strife and sadness. After he clinched the title, he fatally crashed his Lotus in practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and, once again, cruel allegations about Chapman's weak automobiles slugged at his conscience. He persisted, developing the excellent Lotus 72 that carried Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi to the title in 1972.

It was during that period that Chapman and engineering director Tony Rudd (a brilliant engineer and team manager for the once-glorious BRM racing operation) perfected the first legitimate Lotus power plant. Theretofore, he had employed engines purchased from other manufacturers and modified for special Lotus applications. But the new type 907 engine, first announced in 1971, was pure Lotus. It was an all-aluminum, twin-over-head-cam, 16-valve, four-cylinder engine of impressive compactness and light weight. Despite a relatively low compression ratio (8.7 to 1), the 907 generated 140 horse-power. The first versions were sold to Jensen for use in its new Jensen-Healey sports car, but it was widely accepted that the 907 would become the basic engine for a whole new line of cars from Lotus.

The first model appeared in 1974 as (concluded on page 258)Lotus Land(continued from page 156) the stunning Elite. Unlike previous Lotus highway cars, a majority of which tended to be tiny, somewhat rudimentary two-seaters, the Elite was a shockingly civilized four-seater with all the amenities. Its fiberglass body was a debatable styling triumph; some viewed it as daringly avant-garde, others groused about its odd angularities, which contrived to faintly suggest a sway-backed, home-built look. But the car was quick (128 mph) and laden with the traditionally superior levels of Lotus handling and braking. More-over, the vehicle was such a virtuoso design effort that it received the prestigious Don Safety Trophy from the British Minister of Transport a year after its introduction.

The year 1975 also generated the Esprit, perhaps the most exciting and beautiful Lotus of all time. This wonderfully compact (165 inches long, only 43-3/4 inches high) mid-engine coupe was a product of the fertile mind of master Italian stylist Gioretto Giugiaro and, like the Elite, carried the 907 four-cylinder connected to a five-speed gearbox. The 2300-pound machine was a marvel. It would run nearly 130 mph, accelerate from 0 to 60 in under ten seconds and still get better than 25 miles per gallon on the highway! That, coupled with stupendous handling and superb braking power supplied by its four-wheel disc brakes, made the Esprit an instant hit. It reached America with a tag of under $16,000, but inflation and zany leaps in the international money market have added over ten grand to its price. While the Esprit was attracting raves, Chapman also introduced a two-plus-two version of the Elite, called the Eclat. It was essentially a twin but carried a slightly restyled interior for more cargo capacity at the expense of rear seating room.

Ironically, while Lotus fortunes were booming in the market place with the triumphant new Elite, Eclat and Esprit, Chapman was in a horrible slump on the race track. By 1975, his Mark 72 (correctly called the JPS72 in deference to the megapound sponsorship of John Player Cigarettes and the company's insistence that Lotus racing cars operating under its black-and-gold colors be known as John Player Specials) was three seasons old and the zesty dynamics of Formula I design had shoved the once-dominant machine into dowdy obsolescence. For the first time in memory, a Lotus was excluded from victory circle for a full season during 1975 and Chapman set out on a hard-nosed campaign to regain past glories. In the summer of that year, he composed a 27-page white paper outlining his detailed thoughts on the engineering direction future Lotus Grand Prix cars should take. The document was turned over to Rudd. He, in turn, created a small, elite research-and-development team and housed it in a seedy but still regal country house near Hethel. Ketteringham Hall, as the place was called, had served in recent years as a boarding school.

As Rudd's group labored through 1976, a new man appeared to bring new energy and daring to the seat of the JPS specials. Mario Andretti, ebullient, abundantly skilled as a test driver and a pure racer to the soles of his feet, signed on to run several Grand Prix races for Lotus and ended up by bringing home the team's first victory in 31 races at the rain-drenched Japanese Grand Prix. Suddenly, "the old man," as Andretti called the graying Chapman (though he was only 48 years old), became as deeply involved in racing as he had been in the old days. His enthusiasm returned for the sport that had made him successful in the beginning. The rest is widely known recent history. Andretti won four races during the 1977 Grand Prix season in the new JPS78 and might have been world champion had it not been for several mechanical failures and a few overenthusiastic starts that resulted in crashes.

It all came together in 1978. The R&D group's efforts bore fruit with the stunning JPS79, a machine that ingeniously utilized "ground effects"; i.e., air passing beneath the automobile, to create a suction effect that enhanced traction. The JPS79, Chapman and Andretti were a perfect combination from the start, consistently turning the faster practice and qualifying times and winning five races to claim the World Drivers' Championship, the Manufacturers' Title and wide-spread acclaim. Yet the year was not without its moments of darkness. Ronnie Peterson, the great Swedish driver who operated as Andretti's teammate (having taken the place of his cancer-stricken countryman Gunnar Nilsson), was killed on the opening lap of the Italian Grand Prix. In a note of devastating irony, it was Peterson's death that assured Andretti of the championship, simply because he was the only man with sufficient points to overtake the American in the three remaining races. Of course, the fact that it was the same race track that had claimed the life of Jochen Rindt seven years earlier did not escape Chapman, nor could Andretti avoid the parallels between his situation and that of the only other American driving champion, Phil Hill: He, too, had claimed the crown when his teammate, Wolfgang Von Trips, had died in a similar crash at Monza on the same day 17 years earlier.

Yet the "old man" carries on. His Hethel factory is humming, its 500 employees miraculously immune from the strikes, disputes and lockouts that plague labor relations in other British automobile factories. A new Mark 80 Lotus is expected, in the words of Andretti, "to make the 79 look like a London bus," and passenger-car sales are edging into the prestigious gran turismo league once occupied by such marques as Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini and Aston Martin. Certainly, the use of a special Lotus Esprit in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was a great publicity boon and that neat, angular little machine is rapidly headed for classic status.

So, as the rest of the automobile world rushes onward toward greater homogenization by committee, Colin Chapman stands nearly alone, very likely to become the last of that special breed of men who breathed life and personality into their automobiles. Not bad for a civil engineer who started in a rented garage.