The Lotus 30 was built for all the wrong reasons. Colin Chapman designed it basically to get even with Eric Broadley for “stealing” the Ford prototype program. Even the premise – light weight and low frontal area at any cost – proved to be fatally flawed. Instead of a revenge weapon, the Lotus 30 became the laughing stock of big-bore sports car racing and the program ended in failure. And yet today the few good examples left command similar prices to proven winners from McLaren and Lola. The tale of the 30 is an interesting one, proof that genius is no substitute for a thorough development program.
The Lotus 30 story began, surprisingly, in Italy in 1963. Purchase negotiations between Ford and Ferrari collapsed over control of the racing team, and the Blue Oval guys retreated to Dearborn to lick their wounds and plan an attack. If they couldn’t buy Ferrari, they planned to beat them fair and square (or any other way, for that matter). At the time Ford didn’t have credentials of their own, having only limited involvement in the Shelby Cobra project. The most obvious outsider who could be brought in was Chapman, who was already running their Indy program but had yet to taste success. Chapman thought he had the project in his pocket, but when Lola introduced their Mk.6 GT in 1963, Ford took notice.
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