Built merely as a stop-gap, Colin Chapman’s lithe little road-racer has stayed at the top of its game for over 50 years. We return to the car’s spiritual home to compare old and new
- I want that Lotus light board !!! :)
To quote a former Lotus Components employee, the Seven was ‘thrown together when there were no race cars to work on’. Formula Two and getting the fibreglass-bodied Elite into production were the priorities, and Chapman would surely have expected the Seven, like all competitive cars, to last no more than a few years, by which time there would have been something better – probably from his own pen. The thought of it still going strong half-a-century later would have been implausible.
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Factory records show the build of the first Series One (as it was later to become known) prototype began on July 31, 1957. It was supplied to an Edward Lewis just in time for the Brighton Speed Trial on September 7, where it finished second in class with a time of 29.72 seconds. This car (which incidentally won at Prescott the next day) was in effect a racing special; production models would not be ready until December.
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Lotus' old Hornsey showroom:
