Colin Chapman was born in 1928 and grew up in north London, where his father ran a pub. He trained as a structural engineer and built his first car in 1948 in a lock-up garage, from an old Austin Seven. In 1952 he founded Lotus.
His philosophy fitted in a sentence — simplify, then add lightness — and he applied it with a ruthlessness that made his cars fast and occasionally fragile. The ideas kept coming: the monocoque chassis of the Lotus 25 in 1962, the engine as part of the car’s structure in the 49, wings, and in the 78 and 79 the ground effect that pulled the car onto the track.
Lotus won seven Formula One constructors’ titles under him, and his drivers — Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti — won six drivers’ titles.
He also built road cars, among them the Lotus Seven, which Caterham has built under licence since 1973, and the Elan of 1962. Both are in this catalogue.
He died of a heart attack in December 1982, at fifty-four. At the time he was entangled in the financial scandal around the DeLorean car company; his associate was later jailed, and the judge said Chapman would have been too, had he lived.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
