1968: The Man Who Made LOTUS Racing - Colin Chapman | Millionaire | Classic Motorsport | BBC Archive

Comments · 234

• PH

  @philtucker1224 · 1 year ago

  I did a lot of my apprenticeship at Piper Cams working on Lotus Engines. We had an official visit from Colin Chapman one day which was very exciting and he actually came and stood by my workbench whilst I was carrying-out a Lotus cylinder head mod and I’m pretty sure he gave a sort of “grunt of approval” before moving on to the next work station. (I’m still proud of that 53 years later ha ha!) 😁

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• RO

  @roberttaylor3652 · 1 year ago

  irritating interviewer keeps talking about him being a millionaire instead of talking about his engineering in racing

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• YE

  @yealandred · 1 year ago

  If anyone is in London at the moment they have one of Ronnie Peterson's Lotus 72s on display in the window of the Lotus shop on Piccadilly. I think it's his car from 1975. It's in the corner so you can see it from the street from two sides.

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• BL

  @bluearsdfly · 1 year ago

  I did high school work experience at the Lotus factory in Hethel, Norfolk back in 1996. Vivid memory of going 80 m/ph around a corner in an Elise.

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• LW

  @LWIAAE · 1 year ago (edited)

  It was this era and similar car magazine articles (Chapman at 40 - Car) that spurred me on to save and buy my first new Elan (S4) in 1970 and a Sprint two years later - the latter of which I still have 53 years later. It's staggering how we took it all for granted in those days that the UK would go on and on to even better things and I never thought anything, at the time, about being interrupted by Chapman, at the factory, as I was talking to the Service Manager. I never thought that I was taking part in history, plus that it would all be gone and that the country would be in the state it is today. I was so sad when he died but it was probably better to end that way following the De Lorean debacle. Exciting and interesting times. The other poignant note of the BBC interview was the underlying snobbery of the questioning, which was prevalent at the time, constant suggestions that he was perhaps a local lad made good - millionaire, tycoon and, shock horror, designing and building his own home. Not from the right stock!

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• YS

  @ysgol3 · 1 year ago

  So interesting to see Graham fully mobile and healthy looking here.<br><br>By the end of the following year, when he was left in constant pain for the rest of his life from the horrendous leg injuries he suffered in the &nbsp;1969 US GP, his face had aged at least 10 years.

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• YS

  @ysgol3 · 1 year ago

  So interesting to see Chapman deep in thought and analysing Jackie Oliver&apos;s awful crash which he was so fortunate to walk away from.<br><br>Even all these decades later, his crackling mental energy seems to me to come right through the screen.

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• DA

  @darrenbrailsford6809 · 1 year ago

  Colin Chapman really was king of the hill in motorsport. Paving the way for what formula 1 cars now look like. Aerodynamics, sponsorship the lot. A true innovator. Should have been Sir Colin Chapman as far as I’m concerned. Drive an origin Elan right through to the current Emira and you’ll get what I mean.

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• CM

  @cmiimages · 1 year ago

  As an Aussie and long time Lotus follower, I just think this is brilliant to watch.

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• BR

  @brakecompo · 1 year ago

  Thank you ever so much for posting this - I remember being allowed to stay up late for this as a child. &nbsp;Coming from a family steeped in motorsport, Lotus was always the epitome of car design in my childhood. &nbsp;This film marks the change in Chapman - it was always said that he was never the same man after Jim Clark died, the gamesmanship against Bruce McLaren that the film shows him indulging in after the Oliver accident is an example. &nbsp;Rouen was a properly scary circuit - the film draws a discreet veil over Jo Schlesser being burnt to death on the third lap, as indeed was the old Nurburgring, which we saw only too briefly. &nbsp;The film shows both Chapman’s great intellect, and his cold hard eyes. &nbsp;The filmmakers must have been having kittens when Chapman disappeared completely for six weeks after Jim Clark’s death, before suddenly turning up in the paddock in hired VW Beetle before the Spanish GP. &nbsp;But ultimately I am left with two questions: firstly, why do we no longer produce innovative manufacturing companies like Lotus, is it because we now live in a trivialised society, in which being an media micro celebrity is held above being a great engineer? &nbsp;Secondly, why have successive governments cut BBC funding to the extent that it no longer produces programmes like this, and to what extent has this contributed to the first problem? &nbsp;We now have multi-channel TV and multi-media streaming, but it is almost all unwatchable pap - there is a limited amount of programme-making talent and it is spread too thin.

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• CA

  @calleskoga3572 · 1 year ago

  Very very intresting! I owned a 1968 Lotus 50 for 19 years. And also a 1964 Lotus 28 that i raced in historic racing here in Sweden.

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• CH

  @chancevonfreund9145 · 1 year ago

  Little guides missiles surrounded by volatile fuel and hot liquids! And the tracks equally dangerous. The guys were amazing. 🏁

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