Buy Cheap New Lotus
What is it about British sports cars that is invariably so troubled? Whichever British sports car company is
discussed, there is an unwritten rule that suggests it has a troubled past and, quite often, a questionable future.
Lotus is unfortunately one of those car companies, about which the motoring headlines invariably add a negative
adjective. More is the pity, because Lotus, as with so many other similar firms, grew out of Great Britain's post-WW2
industrial redevelopment. The list is not endless but includes such luminaries as Peerless, Piper, Ginetta and
Fairthorpe. Each of them discovered the value of inexpensive fibreglass, which in moulded body form could cover a
metal chassis, to which could be applied a zesty small capacity engine that would not struggle to propel an often
crude, but also often lightweight motorcar. Although a "cottage industry", this sports car scene was essential to
the UK's motoring history, which was often operated by enthusiasts not possessing business acumen. The same could be
said of Colin Chapman, whose interlinked initials Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman formed the company's enigmatic yellow
and green badge, were it not for the fact that he produced some of the most charismatic sports cars in the world and
even followed the example set by Enzo Ferrari of producing enough motor cars to allow him to race on a Sunday and sell
on a Monday. Yet, this son of a Hornsey, Essex inn-keeper, who designed, developed and made cars initially in a shed
behind the pub, eventually relocated to the company's current home at the former RAF Hethel base presently used as a
test circuit, manufacturing plant, engineering base and sales outlet of remarkable curiosity. Lotus survived under
Chapman's control until his death of a heart attack in unusual circumstances in 1982, aged 54 years. Chapman had been
linked with the illegal goings-on between the British government and the Northern Ireland-based De Lorean car
company.
