Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Cut-Price Excellence From England




This is a real-life car on the streets of Yorkshire.
It is a Lotus Elise, reckoned to be the best-handling production car money can buy.
And it doesn't take that much money.

Lotus was a company started by Colin Chapman in the late fifties, producing lightweight Formula1 racers that actually carried off several Constructors World Championships in the sixties and seventies.
They stopped racing shortly after Colin died.

The Lotus 7 lives on as the Caterham, which can be bought ready-made or assembled by the owner.
The Lotus Elan was Emma Peel's car in the sixties show 'The Avengers', and was the inspiration for the posey Mazda MX-5,which even(originally) copied the pop-up headlights slavishly.
Modern-day Lotus has changed owners several times, and I believe may be currently Korean-owned, with a large interest from General Motors, who use Lotus Engineering to liven-up their Opels and Vauxhalls, particularly the VX-220 Vauxhall sports car.

I believe there are a couple of those in North Leeds.
I'll keep my camera ready.

1 comment:

Sky Captain said...

Sorry,people, that was COLIN Chapman not 'Graham'.
It was of course Graham Hill,father of Damon(1996 F1 Champ).
According to the BBC, Colin Chapman was the first to introduce sponsorship advertising to F1.
So changing the appearance of cars as well as their performance.
I'll edit out the mistakes.