# Lotus Cars History: Colin Chapman, Hethel and the Owners Since

The story of Lotus from Colin Chapman's first car in 1948 to Hethel, Formula 1 dominance, the Elise that saved the company and Geely ownership today.

Source: https://lotustrails.com/guides/lotus-history/

## Colin Chapman

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born in 1928 and studied structural engineering at University College London. In 1948, in a lock-up garage behind his girlfriend's parents' house in north London, he modified an Austin Seven into a trials car. He called it a Lotus. Nobody has ever established for certain why.

His girlfriend, Hazel Williams, lent him the money to found the Lotus Engineering Company in 1952. They married in 1954, and she remained central to the business for the rest of her life. The four letters in the Lotus badge, ACBC, are his initials.

Chapman's approach to engineering is usually summed up in a line attributed to him: simplify, then add lightness. Adding power makes a car faster on the straights. Removing weight makes it faster everywhere.

## From kit cars to Hethel

The early cars were sold largely as kits, which avoided purchase tax. The Seven of 1957 was the purest expression of the idea, and it is still made today by Caterham, which bought the rights in 1973. The Elite of the same year had a glass-fibre monocoque, a first for a production car. The Elan of 1962 introduced the steel backbone chassis and set a standard for handling that designers still refer to.

The company outgrew Hornsey and then Cheshunt. In 1966 it moved to a former wartime bomber airfield at Hethel in Norfolk, where the runways became a test track. Every Elise and Exige was built there. You can read about visiting in our [Hethel and Norfolk guide](/trails/hethel-norfolk-loop/).

## Team Lotus

Chapman's Formula 1 team entered its first Grand Prix in 1958. Over the next two decades it won seven constructors' championships and six drivers' championships, with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti. Clark and a Lotus also won the Indianapolis 500 in 1965.

More than the results, the team changed how racing cars were built:

- **Type 25 (1962):** the first Formula 1 car with a fully stressed monocoque chassis.
- **Type 49 (1967):** the engine as a structural part of the car, with the Ford Cosworth DFV.
- **Type 72 (1970):** side-mounted radiators and a wedge shape that every car copied.
- **Type 78 and 79 (1977 and 1978):** ground effect, using the underside of the car to generate downforce.

There is more on the people in our guide to [famous Lotus drivers](/guides/famous-lotus-drivers/).

## After Chapman

Colin Chapman died of a heart attack in December 1982, aged 54, with the company in financial difficulty and entangled in the DeLorean affair. Lotus has had a series of owners since:

| Years | Owner | What happened |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1986 to 1993 | General Motors | Funded the front-wheel-drive Elan M100 and used Lotus Engineering widely, including on the Lotus Carlton. |
| 1993 to 1996 | Romano Artioli (Bugatti) | Approved the Elise, which is named after his granddaughter Elisa. |
| 1996 to 2017 | Proton (Malaysia) | The Elise and Exige years, the Evora, and an ambitious five-car plan in 2010 that was abandoned. |
| 2017 onwards | Geely (China), with Etika Automotive | The Evija electric hypercar, the Emira, and the Chinese-built Eletre and Emeya electric cars. |

## The Elise saves the company

By the early 1990s Lotus was making small numbers of the ageing Esprit and had lost money on the Elan M100. The Elise, launched in 1995 and delivered from 1996, was conceived as a low-volume car to show off the company's engineering.

Its chassis was the breakthrough: aluminium extrusions bonded with adhesive, a technique developed with Hydro Aluminium, giving a tub that weighed about 68 kg and was stiffer than a welded equivalent. The whole car weighed around 725 kg. Demand was several times what Lotus had planned for.

The same technology went on to underpin the Exige, the Vauxhall VX220 and Opel Speedster, the Tesla Roadster, the Europa S, the Evora and the Emira. When production of the Elise, Exige and Evora ended in 2021, Lotus had built 51,738 of them. The [model guides](/models/) cover each one.

## Lotus today

Under Geely the company has split in two. The sports cars, currently the Emira, are built at Hethel. The larger electric models are built in Wuhan, China. The Emira was announced as the last petrol-engined Lotus, though the company has since talked about hybrids as demand for electric sports cars has proved slower than expected, and the Hethel workforce has been cut. The future of sports car production in Norfolk is a live question, and one we follow on the [blog](/blog/).

## Lotus Engineering

Throughout its history Lotus has earned as much from consulting as from its own cars. The engineering arm tuned the handling of cars as varied as the Isuzu Piazza, the Vauxhall Carlton and the original Proton range, developed engines for other manufacturers, and helped Tesla build its first car. If a car from the last forty years handles better than you expected, there is a fair chance someone from Hethel was involved.