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Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was
born on 9 May, 1928 in a suburb of London. He grew up living at the Railway Hotel,
Hornsey, which his father managed. One of the first significant events of Chapman's life
occurred in March of 1944 when he met his future wife, Hazel Williams, at a dance. Even
prior to their marriage ten years later she was to be instrumental in helping Chapman make
a name for himself in racing and car building, among other things putting up the initial
25 pounds sterling to get Lotus Engineering Co., Ltd., started in 1952.
Chapman
seems to have been taken by fast machinery from an early age. He learned to fly at
university, and, after earning a degree in civil engineering in 1948, he was for a short
time a flying officer with the RAF. Aviation was to remain a lifelong passion. When he got
into car building he soon began to compete. He became determined to achieve great things
as a driver. His approach to covering the financial requirements was to build a car for
himself, demonstrate its qualities on the course, and then sell his innovations and
services, and later copies (not always exact) of the cars themselves, to other enthusiasts
in post-war England. The very first one-off he built was a modification of a 1930 Austin
Seven saloon, and it was only as an afterthought that he decided to enter it in trials
races. He had never even been to a motor race before. From there he was off on a tenacious
hunt for loopholes in regulations that would give him an edge. Many of these were of the
very small variety, and allowed him to exercise and hone his novel engineering approach to
the maximum.
Early
on he held a position with The British Aluminum Company and relied on long hours,
volunteer help and barter arrangements (in consideration for assistance he gave to BRM
with their F1 suspension design he received a converted Ford Zephyr) to keep his car
building operation afloat. It was tough going even after Lotus cars became well known as
winners. Chapman branched out from trials machines to sports cars achieving success at
that level as well. At the end of 1954 he was able to quit his day job and devote himself
entirely to Lotus Engineering and Team Lotus, the newly-formed competition arm of the
business. He was also able to take on paid employees, among whom were names such as Mike
Costin, Keith Duckworth and Graham Hill. Lotus Engineering built both road and competition
sports cars for customers, and eventually Formula 2 and, in 1958, Formula 1 cars as well.
Although single-seaters originally gave Lotus fits due to their having to adapt their
fragile chassis to very high power to weight ratios, Team Lotus continued its on-track
success in sports cars as Chapman continued to develop his engineering magic.
Lotus
cars, though intentionally built sparingly, were not gimcracks. Chapman, above all, wanted
his cars to win. Their notorious frailty was no accident. Chapman was unswerving in his
devotion to minimalist design philosophy. Each part had to do as many jobs as it was
possible to squeeze out of it. Although this trade-off was not always adequate, when it
did pay off it was dynamite.
Chapman's motivation for this approach was apparently not parsimony, but something more
deeply-seated in his personality. It is tempting to relate it to his tendency to treat
superficially many of the people he had dealings with, but more likely it was just a
manifestation of his extraordinary talents. What Chapman left out in material substance he
replaced with cleverness. It was as if automobiles were to him ephemeral things, spirits
of his own creation, or rather spirits formed by the act of their creation. Their physical
existence seemed to have little importance. Only their performance was meaningful. It took
great urging from friends and family before, late in life, he would make even belated
efforts to preserve examples of some of his historically significant machines.
Although his early cars were based on the space frame chassis (done up, as
usual, better than the original), the chassis development that he is most famous for was
the full monocoque that made its debut in the Lotus 25. The 25 was the first of Chapman's
F1 world-beaters and carried Jim Clark to his 1963 championship. It was to be followed in
due course by, among others, the 49, the 72 and the 79. The 49, a winner its first time
out, popularized the engine as a stressed chassis member, and was Chapman's masterpiece
and the epitome of his insistence on extreme economy of design; the 72 sported novel
features such as a wedge shape, torsion bar springing and inboard brakes; and the 79 was
the pinnacle of ground effects, an ingenious madness of which Chapman was, again, a major
innovator. He did not, of course, conceive all of these cars by himself. Others including
Duckworth and Maurice Phillippe made indispensable contributions. Chapman, in the best
engineering tradition, was quick to borrow ideas from other sources including the
aerospace industry. But his finger prints were all over the design and engineering of
every Lotus while he was alive. As a matter of fact, news of Chapman's untimely death was
brought to Team Lotus while they were breaking in the 92 with its active suspension, the
master's last great technical revolution.
Colin
Chapman's story remains half told until Jim Clark is brought into it. Several Lotus
drivers won races only because they were in a Chapman car. But many Lotuses won races only
because Clark was driving them. Chapman and Clark were an odd couple to say the least -
Chapman the brilliant and charming engineer cum salesman; Clark the reserved, thoughtful
farmer from the Scottish Border country, and the driver that Chapman at one time had
wished to be. That they were close nonetheless was due almost certainly to the fact that
each recognized the talents of the other in his particular sphere of motor racing, an
enterprise they both loved. Both were known for parting with a pound reluctantly, although
Chapman was significantly more sophisticated in money matters than was Clark, perhaps, as
it turned out, too sophisticated for his own good (he even managed eventually to get Clark
to pay his expenses from his Indianapolis expeditions out of his retainers). Chapman
showed no prescience in signing up Clark since by that time the Scotsman's abilities were
becoming general knowledge. He got Clark and hung on to him because he built winning cars.
The fruitful relationship between the two, probably approached only by that between
Tyrrell and Stewart, was as much a result of each adapting to the other's natural
shortcomings as anything else. Clark was too down-to-earth to be shined up by Chapman's
hard sell, and Chapman was too savvy to be over awed by the driving ability of which Clark
was justifiably, and obviously, proud. Chapman was genuinely devastated by Clark's death
in 1968 in a Lotus 48 F2 car.
Chapman was always considered a hardware person and not a people person. Yet
some of the greatest names in racing won for him, including Clark, Hill, Rindt, Peterson,
Andretti and Fittipaldi. Stirling Moss, racing for privateer Rob Walker, gave a
Lotus car its first F1 victory. After Chapman's death, but while vestiges of his influence
still remained with the team, Senna chalked up victories in Lotuses. Great drivers are
seldom found consorting with mediocre cars. The caliber of men who chose to drive Lotuses
probably comprises the best witness to the high quality of racing machines that Chapman
produced.
Chapman achieved his greatest fame in the U.S. by forcing the rear-engined
concept on the technologically stagnant Indianapolis 500. Dan Gurney was the one who,
after seeing the Lotus 25, persuaded Chapman that Indy would be worth a look. That look
revealed, to Chapman's glee, an obscene amount of money that, considering the competition,
looked ripe for picking. Gurney set up a deal between Ford and Chapman, and Clark did
indeed nearly take the prize on the first try in 1963 in a controversial finish. The
Lotus-Ford missed again in 1964, but by its 1965 victory the majority of the cars in the
field were rear-engined. There was no great pioneering in the first Lotus Indy cars, not
even the engine placement since Brabham had been there and done that. The Lotus 29's
combination of many 25 features plus a solid big block Ford engine was so far ahead of the
traditional roadsters that it made the whole thing akin to shooting fish in a barrel.
Lotus did break new ground in 1968 with a turbine powered car. It showed such promise in
that race that turbine cars were promptly banned by USAC.
Not everything that Chapman touched turned to into technological gold. The Indy turbine
cars had used four-wheel drive, and Chapman decreed that in 1969 so would the
conventionally-powered Indy and F1 Lotuses. Alas this did not turn out well. The power
train was cumbersome, the drivers complained about the common drive shaft passing through
the cockpit over the top of their legs, and the cars were slow. They never competed.
It is difficult to overstate the influence, in so many different ways, that Chapman had
on F1 as we know it today, what might be called "Big Formula 1." At the end of
1967 Esso pulled its support for motor racing. The CSI, which at the time oversaw the
sporting aspects of the FIA, recognizing the need for expanded financial opportunities for
an expanding F1, withdrew the restriction on advertisements on racing cars. Chapman was
characteristically first in exploiting this opportunity, signing up Imperial Tobacco as
the Team Lotus sponsor for 1968, in the process setting F1 on the road to a financial
addiction to tobacco which has proved as difficult to shake as the real thing. English
racing green gave way to Gold Leaf livery, and later to the stunning black and gold of the
John Player Specials. There can be no argument about the monetary advantages that motor
racing realized from tobacco sponsorship. It was inevitable that so much money floating
around would attract attention, but curiously it was not Chapman but Lotus driver Jochen
Rindt's former manager, Bernie Ecclestone, via his Formula One Constructors Association,
who got control of it.
Chapman
did have a shot at running the money part of the F1 circus. During the great FISA-FOCA war
of 1979 - 1981 a conspiracy was hatched by Jean-Marie Balestre to have Chapman replace
Bernie Ecclestone as head of FOCA. It came to naught, but one both delights and shudders
at the thought of what F1 might be today had this coup d'etat been carried off.
One of the casualties of the 1979-1981 unrest in the F1 world was another Chapman
engineering marvel. In order to reduce chassis movement the suspensions of ground effects
cars were so stiff that they were physically very hard on the driver. Enter the Lotus 86
and 88 incorporating aerodynamics and body work sprung separately from the cockpit. The 86
fell victim to the concession FOCA made in its truce with Balestre that did away with
ground effects skirts. The 88 was ganged-up on and eliminated by assorted constructors and
race organizers watching out for their wallets. Thereafter, ground effects itself was
gradually all but legislated away. These triumphs of politics over progress was
disheartening to Chapman for whom F1 had always been synonymous with the highest level of
technical achievement. He seemed to lose much of his interest in the sport.
Towards the end of his life Chapman, never one to shy away from a chance to
make some money, became entangled in the John DeLorean scandal. The British government
welcomed the DeLorean - Chapman partnership with open arms when it offered to site the
factory for DeLorean's stainless steel wonder car in depressed Belfast, to the extent of
putting up 54 million pounds of financing. Unfortunately several million pounds of this
never made it to Northern Ireland. Rumor had it that its ultimate destinations were the
pockets of DeLorean, Chapman and others. DeLorean's arrest for allegedly dealing in a
controlled substance and the simultaneous collapse of the DeLorean car business left
behind a nasty mess indeed. Due to his premature passing, Chapman's real part in this sad
affair has never been completely explained.
Chapman tossed his cap in the air in celebration of an F1 victory for the last time at
the Austrian race in 1982, which Elio De Angelis took in a squeaker from Keke Rosberg.
Chapman's death from a heart attack in December of that year was shockingly sudden
and a surprise to everyone who had followed his unparalleled career. Some of these were legal authorities looking into the DeLorean fiasco, but the great majority were friends
and family of motor racing who knew they had lost an irreplaceable part of their sport.
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