Colin Chapman

Colin Chapman was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1928 and brought up in Muswell Hill, where his father ran the Railway Hotel. He studied structural engineering at University College London, learned to fly with the University of London Air Squadron, and joined the RAF briefly before turning down a permanent commission. In 1948 he built the Mk1, a modified Austin Seven, and called it Lotus. With the Lotus 6 he began selling kits, and the Lotus 7 of 1957 was so successful that Caterham still makes a version today.

He crashed a Vanwall into Mike Hawthorn in practice at Reims in 1956, which ended his driving and pushed him to the engineering side. Working with John Cooper he helped revolutionise Formula One with small, light mid-engined cars. With Jim Clark, Team Lotus won its first World Championship in 1963, and Clark won the Indianapolis 500 in a Lotus 38 in 1965, the first mid-engined winner. In 1966 Chapman persuaded Ford to sponsor Cosworth’s DFV.

His innovations include the Chapman strut, the monocoque chassis of the 1962 Lotus 25, wings in Formula One and ground effect, culminating in the dominant Lotus 79 of 1978. The Elite of 1958 had a fibreglass monocoque, one of the first composite production cars. From 1978 he was involved with John DeLorean and the DeLorean car, built in Northern Ireland. Chapman died of a heart attack in 1982, aged 54.