New Lotus

The Lotus Engineering Company Ltd was formed in 1952, a partnership between Michael Allen and Colin Chapman, but it really began a few years earlier when Chapman borrowed his girlfriend's garage to convert a Austin 7 fabric saloon into a Lotus Trials Special. Lotus has a heritage that few rivals can match. Although a "cottage industry", the British 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 Lotus boss, 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. In 1986, Lotus was purchased by GM. In the hands of GM, Lotus also bought its american distributor and Millbrook Proving Ground. Starting in the 1980s, Lotus worked on a car similar to the Elan open car of the 1960s, and that model, the M100 Elan, was introduced in 1989.