Colin Chapman

Early life

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on 19 May 1928 in Richmond, Surrey, and brought up at 44 Beech Drive, on the border of Muswell Hill in London N2. His father ran The Railway Hotel on Tottenham Lane next to Hornsey Railway Station. Chapman attended the Stationers' Company's School in Mayfield Road.

Education

Chapman studied structural engineering at University College London, joining the University of London Air Squadron and learning to fly. He left UCL without a degree in 1948, resitting his final mathematics paper in 1949 and obtaining his degree a year late.

Chapman 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.

In 1948, Chapman designed 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, whom he nicknamed "Lotus blossom". With the prize money, he developed the Lotus Mk2. Around this time, Chapman began to show his ability to think of ways to become more competitive while remaining within the rules. One early car had a 6 port head with 4 exhaust and two inlet ports. Chapman realised that better flow characteristics (and therefore more power) could be achieved with an 8 port head, but lacking the resources to have one made, he reversed the port functions and de-siamesed the old inlet ports. With appropriate manifolds and a new camshaft, his engine outclassed the opposition until the rules were changed to outlaw the specific changes he had made. With continuing success on through the Lotus 6, he began to sell kits of these cars. Over 100 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. Besides his engineering work, he also piloted a Vanwall F1-car in 1956 but crashed into his teammate Mike Hawthorn during practice for the French Grand Prix at Reims, ending his career as a race driver and focusing him on the technical side. 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 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 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 "Brickyard". Clark and Chapman became particularly close and Clark's death in 1968 devastated Chapman, who publicly stated that he had lost his best friend. Among a number of automotive figures who have been Lotus employees over the years were Cosworth founders Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, and Graham Hill who worked at Lotus as a mechanic as a means of earning drives. In 1966, it was Chapman who persuaded the Ford Motor Company to sponsor Cosworth's development of what would become the DFV race engine.

Chapman was married to Hazel Chapman (1927–2021). He had two daughters and one son.

DeLorean scandal

From 1978 until his death, Chapman was involved with the American tycoon John DeLorean, in his development of a stainless steel sports car to be built in a factory in Northern Ireland, which was majority-funded by the UK government. The original concept design was for a mid-engine sports car, but difficulty in securing the original Wankel engine rights and design complications led to the rear-engine mount design. This project would eventually evolve into the DMC DeLorean.

On 19 October 1982, John DeLorean was charged with trafficking cocaine by the US Government, following a videotaped sting operation at a hotel in Los Angeles, in which he was recorded by undercover FBI agents agreeing to bankroll a 100 kilograms (220 lb) cocaine smuggling operation. DeLorean Motor Cars subsequently collapsed, during which administrators discovered that £10,000,000 of British taxpayers' money (approximately equivalent to £37 million in 2024) had gone missing.

Lotus Group's 1981 accounts were overdue before Chapman's death, but, when released after his death, disclosed that Lotus had been paid for engineering work by DeLorean via a Switzerland-based Panamanian company run by a DeLorean distributor, despite Chapman's previous protestations that neither he nor the company had been paid via Panama. Chapman died before the full deceit unravelled, but, at the subsequent trial of Lotus Group accountant Fred Bushell, who had funnelled £5 million to himself in the fraud, the trial judge opined that, had Chapman himself been in the dock, he would have received a sentence "of at least 10 years". The car's engineering concept was later sold by the UK Government appointed administrators to Toyota, who used it to develop the AW11 MR2. The liquidators also recovered around £20 million from Swiss bank accounts controlled by Chapman and John DeLorean.