Colin Chapman: 25 Years On

Considering that Lotus founder Colin Chapman, who died 25 years ago this week, is remembered as one of the great automotive engineers and designers, it seems ironic that he actually qualified as a civil engineer.

The fact that he turned his back on the design and construction of bridges and buildings in favour of mechanical engineering is something we can all be thankful for, because he left a legacy of accepted design parameters that effectively established the basic layout and concept of most of the racing cars we see on the grids today.

Although he is hailed as an innovator, very often he was not the first person to think of an idea. Instead, he would go away and read up everything on it, ponder it and then come up with his own interpretation that would later be recognised as the first successful implementation of that concept, rather than the first ever example.

Even from the earliest days of the Lotus Engineering Co in Hornsey, North London, Chapman's big strength was his infectious enthusiasm and an ability to persuade, cajole and even bully people into doing things for him, more often than not for free - a particularly important attribute in the company's cash-strapped formative years.

"Colin had the ability to convince you that you should do what he wanted," comments Mike Costin, who prior to co-founding Cosworth worked with Chapman at Lotus from 1953 to 1961. "He could persuade you that you should carry on working, or do something without your questioning it. Not on technical terms, but by engendering enthusiasm."

Initially built by a nucleus of volunteers working evenings and weekends, the first Lotus cars quickly forged a reputation for themselves, winning countless races. In part this was because their design was quite different to anything anyone else was doing, focusing on simplicity and lightness. However, it was also because Chapman often showed a flair for interpreting the rules to his advantage, by exploiting what regulations didn't rather than did say.

This began in 1951 with his Austin Seven-based Lotus Mk III, which utilised an idea first adopted by an Australian called Derek Jolly for 'di-siamesing' (effectively dividing) the inlet ports on the engine, making it more efficient and substantially increasing power.

Occasionally, Chapman's new cars didn't work. Notable cases are the Lotus 30 and 40 sports cars of 1964 and 65 (the latter famously described by Richie Ginther as "a 30 with 10 more mistakes"). Other examples include the 1969 four-wheel drive Lotus 63 Formula One car, the 1971 turbine-powered Lotus 56B Formula One car and the 1979 Lotus 80 Formula One car. But these failures were relatively few and far between, his designs scoring World Championship victories in 1963, 65, 68, 70, 72 and 78.

Mario Andretti (Lotus 80 Ford) at the 1979 French Grand Prix, Dijon © Forix/Jose Miguel Barros

Generally, success on the track tended to ebb and flow according to the amount of attention he was giving the race team, with the mid-70s - when he was embroiled in the boat business and tried to bring a new road car, the Esprit, to market - being a particularly good example. Similarly, financial problems with Group Lotus and the developing De Lorean crisis distracted him in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Colin was also one for never looking back, and some of his designs floundered simply through lack of development, as the late Walter Hayes, the Ford man who pushed through the DFV project, pointed out. "He would get a wonderful idea and put it into action, and before that idea had been properly worked out, he had a better idea. Then, before that idea could be worked out, he'd got an even better idea. He was impatient with the pace of car development and wanted to get ahead all the time."

As time went by, the rule book got thicker and thicker, regulations became more tightly defined and the scope for finding and exploiting loopholes lessened. Chapman's final throw of the dice was the twin-chassis Lotus 88 of 1981. This consisted of a primary chassis incorporating the ground effect sidepod structures and fixed skirts, exerting downforce directly on to the wheel uprights, with a secondary conventionally-suspended chassis, softly sprung, for the driver, fuel tank and engine/gearbox assembly.

This was an attempt to harness the airflow over and under the car to maximum advantage, while maintaining comfort for the driver and reducing vibration. It had been found that, while the cars went faster the more stiffly they were sprung, the drivers were taking a battering and the cars were shaking themselves to bits. Sadly, the scrutineers could not be persuaded that the car was legal and Chapman was forced to abandon the project.

In terms of personality, he could be charming and intuitive but also quite difficult at times, as Bette Hill, Graham's widow and Damon's mother, recalls. "Colin was a tough character from the word go. I always used to say I wished I'd liked him all the time or hated him all the time! He used to floor me by his toughness and then he would do something quite gracious and I'd say 'He's not that bad.'

"He was a hard taskmaster but he didn't ask anything of anyone that he wouldn't do himself. I never heard Graham say anything against Colin except: 'He's tough and that's why he's successful. He wants the best out of everything that he's put into it.' But there were times when I just had to walk away!"

Colin Chapman celebrates victory with his mechanics in the 1982 Austrian Grand Prix © LAT

What is clear from talking to many of the mechanics who worked for him is that they all hold the greatest admiration for him, even though he could be extremely demanding. Former chief mechanic Dick Scammell: "You couldn't help but be inspired by him, but he had a power over people and he used it. He could sum you up at a flash too. I used to get myself to the state where I thought 'That's it, I'm finished, absolutely finished'. I used to go storming over to his office to tell him where to stick it.

"I'd knock on the door, he'd open it and say 'Hey Dick, I've been meaning to have a word with you. Don't sit there at the table, come over here and sit down in the easy chair. I've really been intending to have a chat to you about what a good job you're doing!' And what do you do?! You'd have cut off your right arm for him, he was one of those sorts of people.

"I'm glad I worked for him. He was totally intolerable but I suppose that's what these people are who achieve so much, they can't be worrying about people round them, they just get on with their life."

Occasionally, Chapman was capable of quite cold, calculating behaviour. A notable case was when, with the 1963 Indy 500 drawing to its conclusion and Jim Clark's Lotus 29 in with a chance of a historic victory, he turned to the car's designer Len Terry, told him a helicopter was waiting for him and that he was needed back at the factory to carry out urgent work on the Lotus 25s and Lotus-Cortinas. When Terry got back, there was no such work waiting for him, it just seemed that Chapman had wanted to bask in any glory there was, alone.

A similar thing happened to Ralph Bellamy, who worked on the Lotus 78 'wing car' project. "Peter Windsor cornered me and talked to me about it and then wrote an article for the Christmas issue of Autocar. I said I'd designed the car and this that and the other. Well, Colin went ape when he read this. But he never said a thing to me.

"I went back to work in January and got called in and he said 'We need you to go to the passenger car factory because there is a problem up there with the Esprit'. Suddenly, I'm not going to Argentina to race the car, I'm going to Hethel to solve some problems on the Esprit. He just promoted me sideways, completely out of the programme, just to bury me. He was going to take all the glory for the 78 himself and I was going to disappear."

Colin Chapman with Jim Clark at the 1963 Dutch Grand Prix © LAT

Relationships with drivers varied tremendously. Chapman never saw eye to eye with Innes Ireland, despite the fact that he gave the works team their first ever Grand Prix victory. But with Jim Clark it was a different matter entirely. Clark was younger than Chapman, but they just seemed to click and the Lotus boss was adept at interpreting what his charge was describing and changing the car to improve it.

The pair won two championship titles together and, but for poor reliability, it could easily have been four or five. They also conquered America, taking victory in the hallowed Indy 500 in 1965 and coming second in 1963 and 66.

When Clark died in a crash in an F2 race at Hockenheim in April 1968, Chapman was devastated and seriously considered quitting the sport. He probably never got as close to his drivers again after that, although Mario Andretti built up a very good rapport with him during his time with the team in the late 1970s, culminating in the pair's 1978 title victory.

It is often forgotten that Chapman was a good driver in his own right, and this is one of the reasons why he was able to understand and interpret the behaviour of the cars described by his drivers.

He drove in many of the early races for the Lotus marque and indeed had his one and only Formula One appearance at the wheel of a Vanwall in practice for the 1956 French Grand Prix. Unfortunately, a crash put paid to his chances of racing, so the record books do not show him as ever having contested a Grand Prix. However, on the road, his driving style is best described as enthusiastic and tales abound of scrapes that he got himself into as a result of an excess of optimism over realism.

Dividing his the time between Lotus Cars, his other business interests, and a busy schedule with Team Lotus was always a struggle and his right-hand man Fred Bushell worked accounting miracles on many an occasion to keep the company afloat.

However, everything unravelled in 1982 when it became apparent to the British government and its appointed representatives that a large sum of taxpayers' money (£8.83 million GBP to be exact) supposedly destined for Lotus to spend on developing the De Lorean sports car, had gone missing.

Chapman died before the case could be brought to court, but Bushell eventually went to prison for his role in the fraud and the judge took the unusual step of stating that, had Chapman lived, he would have gone to jail for at least 10 years.

The JPS-Lotus plane © Action Images

Although this was a stain on his character, he will be remembered primarily for his tremendous achievements. In addition, Chapman was so much more than just a gifted automotive designer and engineer. There were many other areas where he excelled.

He became enthused with the prospect of revolutionising boat construction through the use of fibreglass hulls, he designed boats for his son Clive to use in powerboat racing, and he even penned a range of industrial furniture.

He was also a keen aviator, dating back to his days with the RAF, and flew to as many races as he could, often involving some quite scary landings. This passion for flying stayed with him throughout his life. Just prior to his death, he had commissioned a new design of microlight aircraft from Burt Rutan.

Rutan has since designed the first plane to fly non-stop around the world and won the Ansari-X Prize in 2004 for the first privately-funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two-week period. The microlight eventually flew, in 1983, but never went into production.

Chapman's final stroke of genius was giving Team Lotus technical director Peter Wright permission to explore an exciting new avenue - active suspension. This was computer-actuated suspension using hydraulics rather than conventional springs and dampers.

It was tested on a Formula One car for the first time the day Colin died and went on to be used by Ayrton Senna during the 1987 season with Lotus - some five years before Nigel Mansell won the 1992 Formula One World Championship in an active-suspended Williams.

Colin Chapman really was a man ahead of his time, and it was the ultimate irony that he died ahead of his time too, on December 16th 1982, aged 54. Fortunately, although Team Lotus no longer races, his legacy lives on at Lotus Cars, where the Elise and Exige continue to exemplify the Chapman principles of lightness and simplicity. Meanwhile, Lotus Engineering goes from strength to strength, imparting its specialist knowledge to car manufacturers around the globe.

A fitting tribute was the recent announcement by his old college UCL of the Colin Chapman Lotus Engineering Scholarship, jointly funded by Group Lotus and the Chapman family, cementing the already strong links between the two organisations. Colin might not have qualified there as a mechanical engineer but now others will have the chance to do just that.