Board logo

original lotus seven chassis pic with chapman
bart - 20/6/15 at 01:17 PM

was doing a trawl of the interweb for pics of the lotus t70 chassis , but came across this interesting pic of Colin chapman I believe outside his first premises with an original 7 chassis thought it might make you seven boys smile especially all those that are obsessed with weight




Description
Description

907 - 20/6/15 at 01:36 PM

Nah!

He's not really holding that up in one hand.

It's welded to that fence post on the right.


Paul G

prawnabie - 20/6/15 at 01:49 PM

Is a pity he was such a scoundrel!

Sam_68 - 20/6/15 at 03:30 PM

That's actually a Lotus XI chassis, for what it's worth.

In a similar vein, here's John Bolster, holding up a paneled Lotus 6 chassis:



50lb (23 kg) bare spaceframe
90lb (41 kg) paneled chassis
circa 950lbs (433kg) complete car, with a cast iron (Ford) car engine and gearbox, and not a scrap of carbon fibre in sight (it hadn't been invented yet).

Read it and weep, BEC fanbois.

bart - 20/6/15 at 03:50 PM

sorry I bow to superior knowledge !

just something I came across when trawling the interweb on a rainy Saturday morning ! it did say seven but I noticed no central tunnel . just thought it was a prototype or very early model

cause the engines where all circa 50-60 hp ect not 250 hp which helps . and most of my dads generation where 5' 8" and 10st wet through which also helped I suppose. I know this for fact as I cant get into my mates ww11 jeep !!

Sam_68 - 20/6/15 at 04:09 PM

quote:
Originally posted by bartit did say seven but I noticed no central tunnel . just thought it was a prototype or very early model


No, the early Lotus Sevens had no tubular central tunnel, either - they used a curved sheet of aluminium, stressed, instead. In fact, IIRC, the tubular tunnel structure wasn't introduced until 1986 (by Caterham: copied from Westfield, who did it first... now there's a fact that rubs the Caterham snobs up the wrong way ).

The big giveaway on the picture you posted is the framework to support the rear body. This is an S1 Seven (note the upper framework to support the top edge of the boot and the different bottom frame at the back):



To be fair, you've got to be an expert and look closely to see the difference - the S1 Seven was based on the Eleven chassis (not the other way round - the Eleven came first), so the S2 Eleven and the S1 Seven are pretty similar, apart from these sorts of details.