Within the space of a few weeks two famous Lotus cars sold for top money at auction. One of them, the Lotus 25/R4 with which Jim Clark clinched the 1963 World Championship, could probably lay claim to being the most famous Lotus of them all. And indeed, at £665,800 – the price paid at auction in November – it attained the highest amount ever paid for a Lotus.

Just two weeks later one of the Esprits used in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was knocked-down for £111,500. That’s good news for Lotus lovers; the downside is that the Esprit has gone to a new home in America. The Grand Prix car meanwhile has spent most of its life in Australia.  It was rescued as virtual scrap some years ago by ex-pat John Dawson-Damer, an engineer by profession, and lovingly restored to its’ former glory, joining several other Lotus F1 cars in his possession. Sadly, the collection eventually came up for auction last November; Dawson-Damer having tragically died in an accident at the Goodwood Festival of Speed back in 2000, at the wheel of his Lotus 63.

Whilst John Bower, the new owner of the 25, is Australian, the car has made a return visit to Britain and has been entrusted to the care of Classic Team Lotus. As well as appearing at the Goodwood Revival in September it was also a star attraction at the Autosports International Show earlier this year. Just like Jim Clark himself though, it is an unassuming little car despite having been one of the single most successful Formula 1 chassis of all time.

"Jim Clark winning the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, 20 July 1963"

The world is in the midst of financial turmoil, yet despite much talk of cutting costs Formula 1 teams are busy launching new cars for the forthcoming campaign. Admittedly they had little choice this year, given the introduction of radical new rules put in place before the banking crisis, but if they are serious about saving money, is a new car really necessary every season? Was it ever thus? Well, no actually.

Cast your minds back forty years and, to coin a phrase, the “green shoots” of what we now know as modern Grand Prix racing were beginning to formulate, and of course Colin Chapman and Lotus were in the vanguard. The 1967 season had seen the introduction of the Lotus 49, probably the most iconic Grand Prix car of its era. A recent poll by Octane magazine amongst famous racing drivers saw the 49 nominated by Damon Hill as the Greatest Racing Car of all time. Further, the same magazine has chassis R2 just scraping into the ’25 Most Valuable Cars in the World’ with a figure of £1,000,000 on its head. That car, R2, was the one with which Jim Clark won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in 1967 on its race debut.

Successful Elise and Exige racer Chris Randall had his Eureka! moment recently, having realised that the current-shape Europa could be just the thing with which to contest the 2009 Elise Trophy. Yes, we know it’s called Elise Trophy, but the Europa entry has been accepted on the grounds that it shares the same basic chassis as the S2 Elise/Exige.

Randall’s decision to race the Europa, the first to appear in competition, comes more than forty years after the original made its’ race debut, winning first-time out, so there’s a challenge for Chris!

Lotus introduced the Type 46 Europa in 1966, the first new design to come from the Hethel factory. Conceived as a cheap sports car with the intention that it would replace the Seven, it featured a backbone chassis, similar in concept to the Elan, but this time with a mid-mounted engine. The 1470cc engine and transaxle was sourced complete from the front-wheel-drive Renault 16 saloon. The early Europa's were indeed fairly simple, with fixed side windows, fixed seats and the like.

Nevertheless Lotus Components recognised the competition potential of the aerodynamically efficient Europa and they set-to to produce their own version of the car, designated Type 47. They quickly discarded the Renault mechanicals, replacing them with a Cosworth-tuned 1594cc Lotus Twin-Cam engine mated to a Hewland FT200 gearbox. Works cars used Tecalemit-Jackson fuel injection, but the majority of customers preferred the relative simplicity of Weber carburettors. That fuel injection was a little troublesome and the first car was actually burnt-out whilst testing, thanks to fuel pressure being too much for a plastic pipe!

Yes, it’s that time of year when we look forward to the future, make resolutions we’re never likely keep, wish each other health, wealth and happiness, optimistically hope that the New Year will be better than the old. Not much chance of that this time around, if the BBC and other doom merchants are to be believed, but Lotus have become past masters at weathering storms and are sure to come through this one.

It is also the time of year when we look nostalgically back at the past, so with Lotus having just celebrated its 60th birthday, what better way to blow away the seasonal hangover than a quick drive through the last six decades?

......1949

Still early days for Lotus, with Colin Chapman having commenced his National Service with the RAF in October 1948. However the Austin Seven Special that subsequently became known as Lotus Mk 1 had been completed in the Spring of that year and Chapman had managed to collect class awards with it in the two trials that he found time to contest.

......1959

Things have always moved fast at Lotus and as 1959 beckoned the company was emerging as a serious manufacturer. Thru’ the fifties things had progressed rapidly from that original Mk 1, which was sold off in late 1950, via more trials cars to the Mk 6, the first sports racer, introduced in 1952, with over 100 examples being built in the ensuing three years. That was followed in 1957 by the original Seven, a model that essentially continues to this day in Caterham guise.