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Lotus Cars is a British manufacturer of sports cars and racing cars based in East Anglia and formed as Lotus Engineering Ltd. by the engineer Colin Chapman, in 1952. The Company's first factory was in old stables behind the Railway Hotel in Hornsea. more...

Lotus was active and competitive in Formula One racing from 1958 to 1994. Since the 1960s the company has occupied a modern factory and road test facility at Hethel, near Norwich.

Chapman died of a heart attack in 1982, at the age of 54, having begun life an inn-keeper's son and ended a multi-millionaire industrialist in post-war Britain, whilst building tens of thousands of successful racing and road cars and winning the Formula One World Championship seven times.

In 1986 the company was bought by General Motors. On August 27, 1993, GM sold the company, for £30 million, to A.C.B.N. Holdings S.A. of Luxembourg, a company controlled by Italian businessman Romano Artioli, who also owned Bugatti Automobili SpA. In 1996 a majority share in Lotus was sold to Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Bhd (Proton), a Malaysian car company listed on the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange.

The company also acts as an engineering consultancy, performing development - particularly of suspension - for other car manufacturers.

As of 2005 the Malaysian company Proton organised Lotus as Group Lotus, divided into Lotus Cars and Lotus Engineering. A Formula One team is in the works, according to rumour.

Formula One

The company encouraged its customers to race its cars, and itself entered Formula One as a team in 1958. A Lotus Formula One car driven by Stirling Moss won the first Grand Prix for the marque in 1960. Major success came in 1963 with the Lotus 25, which - with Jim Clark driving - won Lotus its first F1 World Championship. Clark's untimely death - he crashed driving a Formula Two Lotus 48 in March 1968 after his rear tyre failed in a turn - was a severe blow to the team and to Formula One. He was the dominant driver in the dominant car, and remains an inseparable part of Lotus's early years. That year's championship was won by Clark's Lotus team-mate, Graham Hill.

Lotus is credited with establishing the mid-engine configuration as the best design for formula 1 and Indy cars, with developing the first monocoque Formula 1 chassis, and the integration of the engine and transaxle as chassis components. Lotus also was first with adding wings to Formula 1 cars to add downforce, as well as moving radiators to the sides in F1 cars to aid in aerodynamic performance, and inventing active suspension.

Even after Chapman's death, until the late 1980s, Lotus continued a major player in Formula One. Ayrton Senna drove for the Lotus team from 1985 to 1987, winning twice in each year, whilst achieving 17 pole positions. However, by the company's last Formula One race in 1994 the cars were no longer very competitive. During the Formula 1 years Lotus won a total of 79 Grand Prix races. During his lifetime Chapman saw Lotus beat Ferrari as the first team to achieve 50 Grand Prix victories, despite Ferrari having won their first Formula 1 race nine years before Lotus won their own first GP victory.

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