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Colin
Chapman
Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on 9 May, 1928 in
a suburb of London. He grew up living at the Railway Hotel, Hornsey, which
his father managed. One of the first significant events of Chapman's life
occurred in March of 1944 when he met his future wife, Hazel Williams,
at a dance. Even prior to their marriage ten years later she was to be
instrumental in helping Chapman make a name for himself in racing and
car building, among other things putting up the initial 25 pounds sterling
to get Lotus Engineering Co., Ltd., started in 1952.  Chapman
seems to have been taken by fast machinery from an early age. He learned
to fly at university, and, after earning a degree in civil engineering
in 1948, he was for a short time a flying officer with the RAF. Aviation
was to remain a lifelong passion. When he got into car building he soon
began to compete. He became determined to achieve great things as a driver.
His approach to covering the financial requirements was to build a car
for himself, demonstrate its qualities on the course, and then sell his
innovations and services, and later copies (not always exact) of the cars
themselves, to other enthusiasts in post-war England. The very first one-off
he built was a modification of a 1930 Austin Seven saloon, and it was
only as an afterthought that he decided to enter it in trials races. He
had never even been to a motor race before. From there he was off on a
tenacious hunt for loopholes in regulations that would give him an edge.
Many of these were of the very small variety, and allowed him to exercise
and hone his novel engineering approach to the maximum. Early
on he held a position with The British Aluminum Company and relied on
long hours, volunteer help and barter arrangements (in consideration for
assistance he gave to BRM with their F1 suspension design he received
a converted Ford Zephyr) to keep his car building operation afloat. It
was tough going even after Lotus cars became well known as winners. Chapman
branched out from trials machines to sports cars achieving success at
that level as well. At the end of 1954 he was able to quit his day job
and devote himself entirely to Lotus Engineering and Team Lotus, the newly-formed
competition arm of the business. He was also able to take on paid employees,
among whom were names such as Mike Costin, Keith Duckworth and Graham
Hill. Lotus Engineering built both road and competition sports cars for
customers, and eventually Formula 2 and, in 1958, Formula 1 cars as well.
Although single-seaters originally gave Lotus fits due to their having
to adapt their fragile chassis to very high power to weight ratios, Team
Lotus continued its on-track success in sports cars as Chapman continued
to develop his engineering magic. Lotus cars,
though intentionally built sparingly, were not gimcracks. Chapman, above
all, wanted his cars to win. Their notorious frailty was no accident.
Chapman was unswerving in his devotion to minimalist design philosophy.
Each part had to do as many jobs as it was possible to squeeze out of
it. Although this tradeoff was not always adequate, when it did pay off
it was dynamite. Chapman's motivation for this approach was apparently
not parsimony, but something more deeply-seated in his personality. It
is tempting to relate it to his tendency to treat superficially many of
the people he had dealings with, but more likely it was just a manifestation
of his extraordinary talents. What Chapman left out in material substance
he replaced with cleverness. It was as if automobiles were to him ephemeral
things, spirits of his own creation, or rather spirits formed by the act
of their creation. Their physical existence seemed to have little importance.
Only their performance was meaningful. It took great urging from friends
and family before, late in life, he would make even belated efforts to
preserve examples of some of his historically significant machines. Although
his early cars were based on the space frame chassis (done up, as usual,
better than the original), the chassis development that he is most famous
for was the full monocoque that made its debut in the Lotus 25. The 25
was the first of Chapman's F1 world-beaters and carried Jim Clark to his
1963 championship. It was to be followed in due course by, among others,
the 49, the 72 and the 79. The 49, a winner its first time out, popularized
the engine as a stressed chassis member, and was Chapman's masterpiece
and the epitome of his insistence on extreme economy of design; the 72
sported novel features such as a wedge shape, torsion bar springing and
inboard brakes; and the 79 was the pinnacle of ground effects, an ingenious
madness of which Chapman was, again, a major innovator. He did not, of
course, conceive all of these cars by himself. Others including Duckworth
and Maurice Phillippe made indispensable contributions. Chapman, in the
best engineering tradition, was quick to borrow ideas from other sources
including the aerospace industry. But his finger prints were all over
the design and engineering of every Lotus while he was alive. As a matter
of fact, news of Chapman's untimely death was brought to Team Lotus while
they were breaking in the 92 with its active suspension, the master's
last great technical revolution. Colin Chapman's
story remains half told until Jim Clark is brought into it. Several Lotus
drivers won races only because they were in a Chapman car. But many Lotuses
won races only because Clark was driving them. Chapman and Clark were
an odd couple to say the least - Chapman the brilliant and charming engineer
cum salesman; Clark the reserved, thoughtful farmer from the Scottish
Border country, and the driver that Chapman at one time had wished to
be. That they were close nonetheless was due almost certainly to the fact
that each recognized the talents of the other in his particular sphere
of motor racing, an enterprise they both loved. Both were known for parting
with a pound reluctantly, although Chapman was significantly more sophisticated
in money matters than was Clark, perhaps, as it turned out, too sophisticated
for his own good (he even managed eventually to get Clark to pay his expenses
from his Indianapolis expeditions out of his retainers). Chapman showed
no prescience in signing up Clark since by that time the Scotsman's abilities
were becoming general knowledge. He got Clark and hung on to him because
he built winning cars. The fruitful relationship between the two, probably
approached only by that between Tyrrell and Stewart, was as much a result
of each adapting to the other's natural shortcomings as anything else.
Clark was too down-to-earth to be shined up by Chapman's hard sell, and
Chapman was too savvy to be over awed by the driving ability of which
Clark was justifiably, and obviously, proud. Chapman was genuinely devastated
by Clark's death in 1968 in a Lotus 48 F2 car. Chapman
was always considered a hardware person and not a people person. Yet some
of the greatest names in racing won for him, including Clark, Hill, Rindt,
Peterson, Andretti, Mansell and Fittipaldi. Stirling Moss, racing for
privateer Rob Walker, gave a Lotus car its first F1 victory. After Chapman's
death, but while vestiges of his influence still remained with the team,
Senna chalked up victories in Lotuses. Great drivers are seldom found
consorting with mediocre cars. The caliber of men who chose to drive Lotuses
probably comprises the best witness to the high quality of racing machines
that Chapman produced. Chapman achieved
his greatest fame in the U.S. by forcing the rear-engined concept on the
technologically stagnant Indianapolis 500. Dan Gurney was the one who,
after seeing the Lotus 25, persuaded Chapman that Indy would be worth
a look. That look revealed, to Chapman's glee, an obscene amount of money
that, considering the competition, looked ripe for picking. Gurney set
up a deal between Ford and Chapman, and Clark did indeed nearly take the
prize on the first try in 1963 in a controversial finish. The Lotus-Ford
missed again in 1964, but by its 1965 victory the majority of the cars
in the field were rear-engined. There was no great pioneering in the first
Lotus Indy cars, not even the engine placement since Brabham had been
there and done that. The Lotus 29's combination of many 25 features plus
a solid big block Ford engine was so far ahead of the traditional roadsters
that it made the whole thing akin to shooting fish in a barrel. Lotus
did break new ground in 1968 with a turbine powered car. It showed such
promise in that race that turbine cars were promptly banned by USAC. Not
everything that Chapman touched turned to into technological gold. The
Indy turbine cars had used four-wheel drive, and Chapman decreed that
in 1969 so would the conventionally-powered Indy and F1 Lotuses. Alas
this did not turn out well. The power train was cumbersome, the drivers
complained about the common drive shaft passing through the cockpit over
the top of their legs, and the cars were slow. They never competed. It
is difficult to overstate the influence, in so many different ways, that
Chapman had on F1 as we know it today, what might be called "Big Formula
1." At the end of 1967 Esso pulled its support for motor racing. The CSI,
which at the time oversaw the sporting aspects of the FIA, recognizing
the need for expanded financial opportunities for an expanding F1, withdrew
the restriction on advertisements on racing cars. Chapman was characteristically
first in exploiting this opportunity, signing up Imperial Tobacco as the
Team Lotus sponsor for 1968, in the process setting F1 on the road to
a financial addiction to tobacco which has proved as difficult to shake
as the real thing. English racing green gave way to Gold Leaf livery,
and later to the stunning black and gold of the John Player Specials.
 There can be no argument about the monetary advantages that
motor racing realized from tobacco sponsorship. It was inevitable that
so much money floating around would attract attention, but curiously it
was not Chapman but Lotus driver Jochen Rindt's former manager, Bernie
Ecclestone, via his Formula One Constructors Association, who got control
of it. Chapman did have a shot at running
the money part of the F1 circus. During the great FISA-FOCA war of 1979
- 1981 a conspiracy was hatched by Jean-Marie Balestre to have Chapman
replace Bernie Ecclestone as head of FOCA. It came to naught, but one
both delights and shudders at the thought of what F1 might be today had
this coup d'etat been carried off. One of the casualties of the 1979-1981
unrest in the F1 world was another Chapman engineering marvel. In order
to reduce chassis movement the suspensions of ground effects cars were
so stiff that they were physically very hard on the driver. Enter the
Lotus 86 and 88 incorporating aerodynamics and body work sprung separately
from the cockpit. The 86 fell victim to the concession FOCA made in its
truce with Balestre that did away with ground effects skirts. The 88 was
ganged-up on and eliminated by assorted constructors and race organizers
watching out for their wallets. Thereafter, ground effects itself was
gradually all but legislated away. These triumphs of politics over progress
was disheartening to Chapman for whom F1 had always been synonymous with
the highest level of technical achievement. He seemed to lose much of
his interest in the sport. Towards the end
of his life Chapman, never one to shy away from a chance to make some
money, became entangled in the John DeLorean scandal. The British government
welcomed the DeLorean - Chapman partnership with open arms when it offered
to site the factory for DeLorean's stainless steel wonder car in depressed
Belfast, to the extent of putting up 54 million pounds of financing. Unfortunately
several million pounds of this never made it to Northern Ireland. Rumor
had it that its ultimate destinations were the pockets of DeLorean, Chapman
and others. DeLorean's arrest for allegedly dealing in a controlled substance
and the simultaneous collapse of the DeLorean car business left behind
a nasty mess indeed. Due to his premature passing, Chapman's real part
in this sad affair has never been completely explained. Chapman tossed
his cap in the air in celebration of an F1 victory for the last time at
the Austrian race in 1982, which Elio De Angelis took in a squeaker from
Keke Rosberg. Chapman's death from a heart attack in December of
that year was shockingly sudden and a surprise to everyone who had followed
his unparalleled career. Some of these were legal authorities looking
into the DeLorean fiasco, but the great majority were friends and family
of motor racing who knew they had lost an irreplaceable part of their
sport.
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