1965 Lotus

During the 1963 Formula 1 racing season Chapman’s factory team, Team Lotus, had utterly dominated the Grand Prix world. Their number one driver was the legendary Jim Clark. He had just won a record seven World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix races in the single season to clinch not only the Drivers’ World Championship title for himself but also the Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship crown for Lotus itself. The year had also seen him and his Lotus-powered-by-Ford turn the American speedway racing establishment upside down, by dominating the pace in the Indianapolis 500-Miles and then shining again in his rear-engined V8 car at Trenton and Milwaukee.

It was against this background that Colin Chapman had introduced his typically trend-setting, typically ingenious Lotus Elan. As a production sports car it used a new design of fabricated sheet steel skinned backbone chassis, over which the incredibly neat and compact glassfibre bodyshell sat like a saddle. Combine this structure’s light weight with a magnificent new 1594cc Ford-based 4-cylinder engine, super-tuned by addition of a twin-overhead camshaft Lotus cylinder head, and a sports car had been born which combined tremendous acceleration and disc-braking ability with stupendous road holding power. The Type 26R was the further-lightened, further-tuned, purebred road-racing version of this legendary design.