50 Fun Facts About Lotus Cars

In which James Bond film does a Lotus Esprit drive off a pier and become a submarine?

The Spy Who Loved Me used six Esprits and one working submarine, nicknamed Wet Nellie. A former US Navy SEAL piloted it underwater wearing scuba gear.

The Lotus Elise of 1996 was named after Elisa, which relative of company chairman Romano Artioli?

His granddaughter Elisa Artioli got more than a namesake: Lotus delivered the very last Elise ever built, a gold Sport 240, to her.

Which pioneering electric sports car was based on the Lotus Elise and built at the Hethel factory?

Tesla Roadster body panels arrived at Hethel from France, and Lotus supplied some 2,500 cars without powertrains. In the end only about 7% of the parts were shared with the Elise.

The Lotus Type 108 that won Olympic gold at Barcelona in 1992 was what kind of machine?

A pursuit bicycle with a one-piece carbon frame, it carried Chris Boardman to gold on the Barcelona velodrome. It was Britain's first Olympic cycling gold in 72 years.

Which sports car built in Northern Ireland did Lotus re-engineer around an Esprit-style chassis?

DMC DeLorean engineering was handed to Lotus after the first design proved to need an almost complete rethink. Under the stainless-steel skin sits a Lotus-style steel backbone.

Almost every Lotus road car launched since the late 1950s has a name beginning with which letter?

E names became a Lotus tradition with the Eleven, reportedly to avoid confusion with Roman numerals such as IX and XI. The Seven is one of the few exceptions.

Which entrepreneur bought the Lotus submarine car from a James Bond film at a 2013 London auction?

Elon Musk bought the prop after it had sat for years in a New York storage unit, whose contents a buyer had picked up blind for under $100.

Why did a newspaper and police chiefs campaign to ban the Vauxhall-based Lotus Carlton saloon?

It was too fast, topping 176 mph while carrying four adults in comfort. One stolen Carlton was used in ram raids for months because police cars could not get near it.

The letters ACBC woven into the Lotus badge are the initials of which motor racing figure?

Colin Chapman was christened Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman and founded Lotus in 1952. His first partners, the Allen brothers, were reportedly told the letters stood for all of them.

Which 1990 film featured a Lotus Esprit after Ferrari and Porsche turned down the product placement?

Pretty Woman went to Lotus by default: the two better-known makers did not want their cars associated with soliciting prostitutes.

Which British company bought the rights to the Lotus Seven in 1973 and has built the car ever since?

Caterham had been a leading dealer for the Seven, and its founder bought the design when Lotus decided to shed its kit-car image.

The Lotus factory and test track at Hethel in Norfolk were built on what kind of former site?

A wartime airfield, RAF Hethel was built in 1942 for American aircrews. Lotus moved in during 1966, and its test track still uses stretches of the old runway.

Which Chinese carmaking group took a controlling 51% stake in Lotus in 2017?

Geely and its co-owner later put £2 billion behind a plan to turn Lotus electric and lift output from about 1,500 cars a year to tens of thousands.

Early Lotus cars such as the Seven were sold as kits so British buyers could avoid which charge?

Purchase tax applied to finished cars but not to kits of parts, so owners bolted their Lotus together at home. The advantage vanished in 1973, when VAT replaced the old system.

In which 1960s British TV series did Diana Rigg, as Emma Peel, drive a Lotus Elan?

The Avengers gave the Elan its most famous driver. Under the body sat a steel backbone chassis, the first on a Lotus road car and a layout the company kept for years.

Which Japanese sports car launched in 1989 used the 1960s Lotus Elan as its design benchmark?

Mazda MX-5 designers borrowed Elan cues such as the door handles and tail lamps, and the first version even echoed the Lotus's pop-up headlights.

Which driver took his first Grand Prix victory in a Lotus in heavy rain in Portugal in 1985?

Ayrton Senna lapped every car but one in the downpour. He took 16 pole positions in three seasons with Lotus before leaving for McLaren.

Jim Clark's Lotus 38 became the first rear-engined car to win which famous race in 1965?

Indianapolis 500 tradition was overturned that day: the old front-engined roadsters were finished, and only six of the 33 starters still had the engine up front.

Which carmaker teamed up with Lotus in 1963 to create a twin-cam Cortina sports saloon for racing?

Ford needed 1,000 cars built before the saloon was allowed to race, and Lotus agreed to fit its twin-cam engine. The factory cars were painted white with a green stripe.

Ron Hickman, designer of the 1962 Lotus Elan, later made his fortune by inventing which DIY product?

The Workmate workbench was born when he sawed the leg off an expensive chair he was using as a trestle. Black & Decker's version earned him a 3% royalty on every sale.

The first Lotus, built by a London student in 1948, was a trials car based on which model?

Austin 7 chassis and running gear sat under a body of thin aluminium bonded to plywood. The original car was sold in 1950 and has never been traced.

Where did Lotus set up its first factory, behind a north London hotel run by the founder's father?

In old stables behind the Railway Hotel in Hornsey, the young company built its early cars. It moved to a purpose-built factory at Cheshunt in 1959.

Which car giant bought Lotus in 1986 and sold it to an Italian businessman seven years later?

General Motors paid £22.7 million for a 91% stake and put Lotus engineers to work on its own products, including the Ecotec four-cylinder engine.

Which Asian carmaker bought a majority share in Lotus in 1996 and owned it for two decades?

Proton, a Malaysian carmaker, put Lotus know-how into its own models: Lotus tuned their handling and helped develop the Campro engine.

Romano Artioli, who bought Lotus in 1993, was at the time also the owner of which revived marque?

Bugatti had been revived by Artioli to build the EB 110 supercar, but it went bankrupt in 1995, and he sold a majority of Lotus the next year to cover his losses.

Which 1960s TV series opens with Patrick McGoohan driving a Lotus Seven with the plate KAR 120C?

The Prisoner starred McGoohan as a secret agent held in a mysterious village. By then the Seven was a decade old; Lotus built it from 1957 to 1973.

The 1966 Lotus Europa took its engine and gearbox from a hatchback made by which French carmaker?

Renault designed the unit to drive the front wheels, so turning it round for a mid-engined car would have given four reverse gears. Lotus flipped the final drive to fix it.

The 1957 Lotus Elite had no separate chassis: its entire load-bearing shell was made of what?

Fibreglass formed the entire structure, where other makers used it only for outer panels. It was light, but the rear mounting points were known to pull out of the plastic.

Which Formula One world champion received the first customer Lotus Evija electric hypercar in 2023?

Jenson Button got a car with four motors, one at each wheel, making about 2,000 horsepower in all. Lotus limited production to 130 cars, matching its type number.

The Lotus Eletre SUV takes its name from a word meaning 'coming to life' in which language?

Hungarian supplied the word életre for the first Lotus SUV, which was also the first Lotus built in China. The Evija hypercar's name, by contrast, comes from Eve.

Which Italian designer drew the wedge-shaped Lotus Esprit in his so-called folded paper style?

Giorgetto Giugiaro took his Maserati Boomerang concept car as the starting point. He is said to have liked the 1987 British restyle, finding it perhaps too close to his original.

The Lotus Elan M100 of 1989 was the only Lotus production car built with which layout?

Front-wheel drive was an odd choice for a sports car, but Lotus argued it was quicker along a given stretch of road. The engine and gearbox came from Isuzu.

When Lotus ended Elan production in 1995, which South Korean carmaker bought the rights to build it?

Kia Motors built its own version in Ansan from 1996 to 1999 for the Korean market. It looked almost identical apart from new tail lights.

The Lotus Emira launched with a Toyota V6 and later added a turbo four from which German brand?

Mercedes-AMG supplied a 2.0-litre engine making about 360 horsepower. The Emira was announced as the last Lotus with a combustion engine, a plan the company later dropped.

Lotus designed the LT5 V8 engine for the ZR-1 version of which American sports car?

Chevrolet Corvette engineers wanted the world's fastest production car, so Lotus created a 375 hp engine that shut off half of its 16 intake runners at part throttle.

Lotus designed the chassis of which electric tricycle, launched by a British computer pioneer?

Sinclair C5 buyers were scarce after its 1985 launch: of 14,000 made, only 5,000 sold before the maker went into receivership. Lotus also supplied its gearbox and rear axle.

Which design number did Lotus skip in the 1950s, between a racing car and the Elite coupé?

Type 13 was passed over altogether: the sequence runs from the Type 12 racing car straight to the Type 14, the first Lotus built purely for the road.

What was the engineless Lotus Type 119, built for the 2002 Goodwood Festival of Speed?

A soapbox racer made of carbon and aluminium, with disc brakes, it was built to roll down the course in Goodwood's Soapbox Challenge.

Which British driver gave Lotus its first world championship Grand Prix win, at Monaco in 1960?

Stirling Moss won in a Lotus 18 entered by the private Rob Walker team, so a customer car beat the factory's own entries to the marque's first victory.

Which Lotus driver became Formula One's only posthumous world champion after dying at Monza in 1970?

Jochen Rindt was killed in practice for the Italian Grand Prix, but he had built such a lead that his closest rival, Jacky Ickx, could not catch him in the races that remained.

Which Lotus driver became Formula One's youngest world champion at the time, aged 25, in 1972?

Emerson Fittipaldi won five races in the Lotus 72 that year, and his record as the youngest champion stood for 33 years.

Which future world champion joined Lotus as a mechanic before talking his way into a race seat?

Graham Hill made his Grand Prix debut for the team at Monaco in 1958. A decade later he won his second world title in a Lotus.

Which cigarette brand gave Team Lotus its famous black and gold Formula One livery from 1972?

John Player Special was a new brand from Imperial Tobacco, whose red, white and gold Gold Leaf colours Lotus had worn since 1968, when sponsor liveries were a novelty.

Which Second World War aircraft's wing radiators inspired the ground-effect Lotus 78 racing car?

Mosquito radiators sat inside the wing, and their hot-air outlets were shaped to add lift. Turned upside down, the same idea pressed the Lotus 78 onto the tarmac.

The wedge-shaped, four-wheel-drive Lotus 56 racing car of 1968 was powered by which unusual engine?

A gas turbine drove all four wheels, and one of the cars was leading its biggest race with only a few laps left when a fuel pump shaft failed.

Which computer-controlled technology, first tried by Lotus in 1983, did the 1987 Lotus 99T use?

Active suspension let the 99T go easier on its tyres, so it could run less wing and reach a higher top speed. It won twice that season, at Monaco and Detroit.

Which American driver won the 1978 world title in the Lotus 79, a car nicknamed Black Beauty?

Mario Andretti took six wins that year and became the second American world champion. He had joined Lotus after a chance meeting with its boss in a hotel coffee shop.

The Lotus 49 of 1967 was the first Formula One car to race with which famous engine?

Cosworth DFV power won first time out, with Jim Clark at Zandvoort. The engine was bolted on as part of the car's structure, an idea rival teams soon copied.

The 1950s Lotus Elite coupé won its class six times at which famous endurance race?

24 Hours of Le Mans class wins came alongside two victories in the Index of Thermal Efficiency, a prize rewarding fuel economy at racing speed.

The Lotus 25, the first fully stressed monocoque car in Formula One, was first sketched on what?

Table napkins took the first drawings while the Lotus founder talked the idea over during a meal out. The low-slung result, in which the driver lay well back, was nicknamed the Bathtub.