'Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman' (
19 May 1928 -
16 December 1982)
[1] was a
British influential 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 where he joined the University Air Squadron and learned to fly. After graduating in
1948, he briefly joined the
Royal Air Force. 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 World Championships, plus 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
heart attack in 1982 and died, 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 being in limited production they were so successful and highly sought after, until he arrived in
Formula 1. 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
Ferraris and
Maseratis. Eventually, with legendary driver
Jim Clark at the wheel of his race cars,
Team Lotus came to appear 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 tire 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.
Chapman, who came from relatively humble roots, 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 technology
enterprise. 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 De Lorean's
De Lorean 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 De Lorean 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 De Lorean Motor Company" and was sentenced to four years in prison. De Lorean himself was tried on drug-trafficking charges and acquitted.
Picture of Colin Chapman, Long Beach F-1
[1]
Innovations
Many of Chapman's ideas can still be seen in Formula 1 and other top levels of 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 1 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, air resistance 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 use of "
ground effect" (where a partial
vacuum was created under the car by use of
venturis, generating suction (downforce) which held it securely to the road whilst cornering) in Formula One. (Modern Formula One cars generate enough downforce (now generated by wings instead of ground effects) 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. However, skirts were eventually banned, because the skirt could be damaged, for example, from driving over a curb, 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 (eliminating venturis) and raising the minimum ride height of the cars. (Of course, the car designers have managed to get back all of that downforce through other means, aided by extensive
wind tunnel testing).
One of his last major technical innovations was the dual-chassis Formula One car. 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.
Complete Formula One World Championship Results
()
Awards
★ He was awarded "Mike's Mug" by the
Royal Aero Club in 1961.
★ He was voted
The Guardian 'Young Businessman of the Year' in 1970.
★ He was named a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1970.
★ He was inducted in the
International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1994.
★ He was inducted in the
Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1997.
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
1. Where Are They Now at www.oldracingcars.com
External links
★
Colin Chapman biography by Dennis David (note: this biography does not have the correct date of Colin Chapman's birth)
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