Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman
CBE (19 May 1928 - 16
December 1982) was an influential British
designer,
inventor, and builder in the automotive industry. In 1952 he
founded the
sports car company
Lotus Cars.
He studied structural engineering at University
College London
, joined the University Air Squadron and learned to
fly. Chapman left UCL without a degree in 1948, resitting
his final Mathematics paper in 1949 and obtaining his degree a year
late. He briefly joined the
Royal Air
Force in 1948, being offered a permanent commission but turning
this down in favour of a swift return to civilian life. After a
couple of false starts Chapman joined the
British Aluminium company, using his civil
engineering skills to attempt to sell aluminium as a viable
structural material for buildings. Chapman initially ran Lotus in
his spare time, assisted by a group of enthusiasts. His knowledge
of the latest
aeronautical
engineering techniques would prove vital towards achieving the
major automotive technical advances he is remembered for.
Under his
direction, Team Lotus won seven Formula One Constructors'
titles, six Drivers'
Championships, and the Indianapolis 500
in the United States
, between 1962 and 1978. The production side
of Lotus Cars has built tens of thousands of relatively affordable,
cutting edge
sports cars. Lotus is one of
but a handful of British performance car builders still in business
after the industrial decline of the 1970s. Chapman suffered a fatal
heart attack in 1982, aged
54.
Career
In 1948 Chapman started with the
Mk1, a
modified
Austin 7, which he entered
privately into local
racing events. He
named the car "Lotus"; he never confirmed the reason but one (of
several) theories is that it was after his then girlfriend (later
wife) Hazel, who he nicknamed "Lotus blossom". With prize money won
he developed the
Lotus Mk2. With
continuing success on through the
Lotus 6,
he began to sell
kits of these cars. Over
100 of the Lotus 6 kits were sold through 1956.
It was with the
Lotus 7 in 1957 that things really took
off, and indeed Caterham
Cars
still manufacture a version of that car today – the
Caterham 7; there have been over 90 different Lotus 7 clones,
replicas, and derivatives offered to the public by a variety of
makers.
In the 1950s, Chapman progressed through the motor racing formulae,
designing and building a series of racing cars, sometimes to the
point of maintaining limited production as they were so successful
and highly sought after, until he arrived in
Formula One. Along with
John Cooper, he revolutionised the
premier
motor sport.
Their small,
lightweight mid-engined vehicles gave away much in terms of power,
but superior handling meant their
competing cars often beat the all-conquering front engined Ferrari and Maseratis
. Eventually, with legendary driver
Jim Clark at the wheel of his race
cars,
Team Lotus appeared as though they
could win whenever they pleased. With Clark driving the legendary
Lotus 25, Team Lotus won its first
F1 World Championship
in 1963.
It was Clark, driving a Lotus 38 at the
Indianapolis
500 in 1965, who drove the first ever mid-engined car
to victory at the fabled "Brickyard." Certainly, Jim Clark
would have won many more races were it not for his untimely death
in 1968 while racing a Formula 2 car at
Hockenheimring
. The accident was most likely caused by a
rear tyre failure, though the exact cause has never been known.
Clark and Chapman had become particularly close and Clark's death
devastated Chapman, who publicly stated that he had lost his best
friend.
Among a number of legendary automotive figures who have been Lotus
employees over the years were
Mike
Costin and
Keith Duckworth,
founders of
Cosworth.
Graham Hill worked at Lotus as a mechanic as a
means of earning drives.
Chapman, whose father was a successful
publican, was also a
businessman who introduced major
advertising sponsorship into
auto racing; beginning the process which changed
Formula One from rich gentlemen's
pastime, to multi-million
pound
high technologyenterprise. It was
Chapman who in 1966 persuaded the
Ford Motor Company to
sponsor Cosworth's development of what would become the
legendary DFV race engine. Shortly before his death he became
involved in
John DeLorean's
DeLorean Motor Company troubled
venture to manufacture sports cars in Northern Ireland. The full
extent of his involvement has never been proved, but it is believed
he would have been investigated for possible complicity in the
manipulation of government loans during the development of the
DeLorean car. Fred Bushell, Chapman's colleague and close
confidante, pleaded guilty in 1992 to "Conspiring with the late
Colin Chapman and others to defraud the DeLorean Motor Company" and
was sentenced to four years in prison. DeLorean himself was tried
on drug-trafficking charges and acquitted.
Innovations & Legacy
Many of Chapman's ideas can still be seen in Formula One and other
top-level motor sport (such as
IndyCars) today.
He pioneered the use of
struts as a rear
suspension device. Even today,
struts used in the rear of a vehicle are known as
Chapman struts, while virtually identical
suspension struts for the front are known as
MacPherson struts.
His next major innovation was to adopt the use of
monocoque (one-shell)
unibodies (i.e. it replaced both the body and frame,
which until then had been separate components) for car
chassis. This was the first major advance in which
he introduced aeroplane technology to cars. The resultant body was
both lighter, stronger (i.e. stiffer), and also provided better
driver protection in the event of a crash. The first vehicle to
feature this was the
Citroën
Traction Avant in 1934; Lotus was an early adopter of this
technology with the
Lotus Elite, in
1958. The modified monocoque body of the car was made out of
fibreglass, making it also one of the
first production cars made out of
composites.
In 1962 he extended this innovation to racing cars, with the
revolutionary
Lotus 25 mid-engined Formula
One car. This fairly quickly replaced what had been for many
decades the standard design formula in racing-cars, the front
engined, later mid-engined, tube-frame chassis. Although the
material has changed from sheet
aluminium
to
carbon fibre, this remains today the
standard technique for building top-level racing cars. It was a
Chapman monocoque chassis that first introduced the engine and
transmission as stressed members of the overall chassis, again, an
innovation that continues in universal application in today's
Formula cars.
Inspired by
Jim Hall,
Chapman introduced
aerodynamics into
the first-rank of Formula One car design. He popularized the
concept of positive aerodynamic downforce, through the addition of
front and rear wings. Early efforts were mounted 3 feet or so above
the car, in order to operate in 'clean air' (i.e. air that would
not otherwise be disturbed by the passage of the car). However the
thin supporting struts failed regularly, obliging the
FIA to require the wings to be attached directly to the
bodywork. He also originated the movement of radiators away from
the front of the car, to decrease frontal area and, thus, drag at
speed. These concepts also remain features of high performance
racing cars today.
Chapman was also an innovator in the business end of racing. He was
among the first entrants in Formula One to turn their cars into
rolling billboards for non-automotive products, initially with the
cigarette brands Gold Leaf and, most famously, John Player.
Chapman, working with Tony Rudd and Peter Wright, pioneered the
first Formula One use of "
ground
effect", where a partial
vacuum was
created under the car by use of
venturi, generating suction (downforce) which
held it securely to the road whilst cornering. Modern Formula One
cars generate enough downforce (now generated by wings as well as
ground effect created by the shape of the under-tray and diffuser,
along with the radiator ducting) that they could theoretically be
driven on a ceiling once they reach about 100 mph. Initially this
technique utilized sliding "skirts" which made contact with the
ground to keep the area of low pressure isolated. Chapman's next
development was a car that generated all of its downforce through
ground effects, eliminating wings and the drag that they introduce
at high speed. The culmination of this effort, the
Lotus 79, dominated the championship. However,
skirts were eventually banned, because the skirt could be damaged,
for example, from driving over a kerb, and downforce would be lost
and the car could then become unstable. The FIA made moves to
eliminate ground effects in Formula One, by requiring flat bottom
cars from (eliminating venturis) and raising the minimum ride
height of the cars from . Of course, the car designers have managed
to get back much of that downforce through other means, aided by
extensive
wind tunnel testing.
One of his last major technical innovations was a dual-chassis
Formula One car, the
Lotus 88 in . For
ground effects of that era to function most efficiently, the
aerodynamic surfaces needed to be precisely located and this led to
the chassis being very stiffly sprung. However, this was very
punishing to the driver, resulting in driver fatigue. To get around
this, Chapman introduced a car with two chassis. One chassis (where
the driver would sit) was softly sprung. The other chassis (where
the skirts and such were located) was stiffly sprung.
Unfortunately, although the car passed scrutineering at a couple of
races, it was protested by other teams and was never allowed to
run. Under these circumstances, the car was never developed, so it
will never be known if the idea would have worked.
The whole affair dampened his interest in Formula One, but
eventually Chapman moved on. The day that Chapman died, Team Lotus
was testing the first Formula One car with
active suspension, which eventually made
its debut with the
Lotus 99T in .
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(
key)
Awards
Further reading
- Gerard ('Jabby') Crombac, Colin Chapman: The Man and His
Cars (Patrick Stephens, Wellingborough, 1986) ISBN
1-85960-844-2
- Hugh Haskell, Colin Chapman Lotus Engineering (Osprey
Publishing, 1993) ISBN 1-85532-872-0
- Mike Lawrence, Colin Chapman Wayward Genius (Breedon
Books Publishing, 2003) ISBN 1-85983-278-4
References
- Gerard ('Jabby') Crombac, Colin Chapman: The Man and His Cars
(Patrick Stephens, Wellingborough, 1986) ISBN 1-85960-844-2 Page
15
- Mike Lawrence, Colin Chapman Wayward Genius (Breedon
Books Publishing, 2003) ISBN 1-85983-278-4
External links
in 1994.
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