1963 Lotus 27

254

The ex-Fred Wilkinson, Jan Deken, Hans Maasland, pioneering monocoque-chassised,
1963 Lotus-Ford Type 27 Racing Single-Seater
Chassis no. 27/JM/6

At the Dutch Grand Prix of 1962 Colin Chapman and Team Lotus introduced their stunningly beautiful, stressed-skin chassised Lotus Type 25 upon an unsuspecting Formula 1 world. Colin had long agonized over the problem of installing and protecting aluminium fuel tanks within a multi-tubular spaceframe chassis. His fertile mind had been drawn to the match-stick man backbone chassis structure for his forthcoming Lotus Elan production sports car. Now he considered ways of adapting such a structure, with such elegant load-bearing and twist-resisting potential, to a single-seater racing car.

In planning lunches at a local restaurant close to his Lotus factory in Delamare Road, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, he literally sketched upon a table napkin his original scheme to apply a backbone chassis to a