Remembering Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, the Genius

Chapman was quoted saying "Adding power makes you faster on the straights. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere". So Chapman went about rewriting the rule book and history with the thought of the century "Simplify, then add lightness”. He invented the monocoque chassis which he used in his racing cars. This revolutionised the entire car industry across the world. The unique innovation from Chapman’s Chassis was that it was extremely light and it was where the driver sat. Chapman and his engineers bolted the engine directly on to the tub behind of the driver. The rear suspension bolted directly onto the engine to make the Lotus 25. This gave birth to the first ever mid-engined car. Driven by Chapman’s best friend Jim Clark, Lotus used this formula to annihilate competition and take the first world championship with Clark in 1963.

As the development of his race cars evolved, Lotus was also the first company to make a car from composite materials, develop a new type of suspension, change the positions of the radiators to the sides instead of the front and to understand and use aerodynamics. While under Chapman’s reign, Lotus won 6 more titles with this evolving formula in 1965, ‘68, ‘70, ‘72, ‘73 and the last one in 1978. Lotus also won 6 driver’s title in the same corresponding years apart from 1973. In total, of the 73 Grand Prix victories,  Lotus  got 102 pole positions and 65 fastest laps.

Some of the greatest Formula one Champions like Jim Clarkand and Jochen Rindt lost their lives in a Lotus racing car. Rindt is the only driver to date to have won the title posthumous in 1970. The there are racers like Sterling Moss, Graham Hill, Mika Hakkinen, Emerson Fittipaldi, Nigel Mansell, Mario Andretti, Nelson Piquet and most notably, Ayrton Senna who started their career in F1 with Team Lotus.

Apart from engineering, Chapman brought other revolutionary business ideas into motorsports when he swapped the British racing green for his Lotus 49 and painted it in the colours of the packaging of a tobacco company which were sponsoring Team Lotus. It was the first time anyone had ever used a car as a billboard. Chapman acted like it was the most obvious thing to do. But the irony was that Chapman hated cigarettes, and smoking at Lotus was forbidden. Another aspect of Chapman was that he argued with people that tax evasion was a crime but he would justify that his Swiss bank accounts were okay and that he didn’t evade taxes. He claimed he had merely “avoided” taxes. He had an off shore account under the name of Grand Prix Drivers where he kept his money to pay the drivers and to run his business. This would come back to haunt Chapman in the later stages of his life.

Chapman was also known for finding loop holes in the regulations. He would sit for hours and hours trying to find them.  This trend has been used by Formula One teams and every one across the globe. Chapman was a huge believer and supporter of his designs and innovations and he would give everything to defend his company that he arguably named the team after his lover. During an outburst of safety regulations, he even tried to convince the officials that paper was fire proof. So in a way he was also a lawyer.

But the downfall of Chapman was when he was begged into an offer with DeLorean to help build a car against his will. A huge controversy broke out in 1978 which accused Chapman of using British tax payer’s money which was given to DeLorean to develop the car, that was used in the “Back to the Future” movie franchise, and put the money to his off-shore bank account. The DeLorean scandal was one of the biggest scandals of the time. With the fear of possible prison time if convicted, Chapman’s health gradually started to slump. He withdrew himself from the racing tracks and then the public world all together. Then on December 16^th, 1982, Chapman died of a heart attack, before the final verdict of the DeLorean scandal.

Upon the final verdict years later, the accountant at the time for the company was sentenced to prison. The judge who oversaw the DeLorean case reckoned that if Chapman was alive, he would have received a 10 year sentence.

Lotus is still one of the remaining British sportscar companies to have survived this long and even today is alive and brings out brilliant little cars like the Evora, the Elise and the Exige. These cars are not very popular in the world as compared to the German or Italian cars or even other British car makers like Aston Martin or Jaguar Land Rover. But all of the sports car manufacturers owe something to Lotus and Colin Chapman. Because almost every car manufacturer from the miniscule Tata Nano to the Swedish God powered Koenigsegg One:1 follow the same principles that was laid out by Chapman many years ago.  Even today the cars made by Lotus using the same philosophy of light and simplicity has given us some of the greatest modern ground breaking cars of the 21^st century use modern Lotus chassis like the Hennessey Venom GT and the Tesla Roadster, to name a few. When talking about India, Lotus had designed the chassis of the Mahindra Scorpio, which is so popular in India, so that it is stable at high speeds.

Chapman made a design of Formula One car whose basic principles remain the same 32 years after his death. If you want to know why your car is as light as it is, or how you get high fuel economy, or how your car corners the way it does, remember the name Colin Chapman and remember the Logo of Lotus with Chapman’s ‘ACB’ initials. Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman will always be immortal thanks to the legacy he created.