1962 Lotus 25 F1

This 1962 Lotus 25 F1 sold for $959,470 at the H&H Cheltenham Racecourse auction, March 1, 2007.

Though it’s a strong statement to make, the Lotus 25 is unquestionably one of the most significant designs in the history of Formula One. Like the Lotus 49 that came along five years later, in the course of a single season it redefined how serious contenders from that point forward would be designed. The innovation in this case was the monocoque chassis, so light and stiff that it changed the rules overnight.

The monocoque concept seems simple and intuitive to us now, but at the time it was revolutionary. Automobile design evolved from the wagon, and until the ’50s retained the basic layout of a couple of rails side by side with engine, body, and suspension bolted onto them. It was simple and cheap, but heavy and intrinsically very flexible. If you wanted performance, spring rates and suspension settings had to be kept very stiff because the chassis itself was effectively a huge secondary spring. The great racing designs of the late ’30s and ’40s (particularly Alfa Romeo) actually calculated chassis flexibility into their designs.

In the early 1950s, tubular space frames arrived on the scene and provided the next big step in racing car design. An offshoot of aircraft design, space frames took the old two-dimensional platform and added a third dimension, making a triangulated box that was much better at carrying the various loads that racing a car put into it. They were complicated to build, but relatively light and stiff. For ten years, they were the paradigm that became accepted practice.

Eliminate tubes and stress the skin

The next step was to eliminate tubes and build a structure by stressing the outside skins of the bodywork, which is what the Lotus 25 did, and race car design has not been the same since. The great stiffness (particularly torsional, or twisting, stiffness) and lighter weight of the structure allowed a much softer, more supple suspension setup that in turn made it much easier to keep the tires attached to the track. If you want a personal demonstration of this, try driving a Triumph TR3, followed by an E-type Jaguar. The difference will be obvious. The other big advantage was that elimination of the tube frame allowed a more compact shape that would still hold a driver, albeit a small one; if you are bigger than 5′ 10″ and 160 lbs, you’ll never fit in a Lotus 25.

The Lotus 25 showed up part way into the 1962 season and was for all intents the same as the space-framed Lotus 24 that had run the first races (and was sold to outside customers), except for the monocoque chassis. The suspension, engine, transaxle, etc. were effectively identical, but it was 45 pounds lighter and three inches narrower (less frontal area) than the 24.

After a few races to sort things out, Jim Clark and the 25 were the car to beat, with Clark and Lotus losing the championship to BRM in the last race of the season (driving chassis R5) when the engine failed while in a comfortable lead. In 1963, the 25 continued as the dominant car, and Clark easily won the championship with seven victories.

The issues surrounding this particular Lotus 25 are interesting and pose certain dilemmas. Chassis R5 was constructed in time for the last race of 1962, where it was Clark’s mount until the engine failed. The car had significant use in early 1963 with Clark, then was given to Trevor Taylor, the number two driver at Lotus. At Spa the suspension failed and the car was very badly crashed. It was taken back to the factory, stripped down to the broken tub, and stashed in a corner awaiting the trash man, as it was easier to build a new car than to repair a broken one. As a car per se, R5 ceased to exist.

Recreated from salvaged parts

Cedric Selzer (a Lotus engineer at the time) was apparently given permission to remove the broken tub and various other “redundant parts,” which he did, stashing them in a garage near London. This would have been in 1963. Over the following years, he accumulated a substantial quantity of Lotus racing spares, all duly stored in various lockups around London. In the early 1980s, Selzer was able to buy a correct Climax V8 engine in Detroit.

In 1984, twenty-one years after the Lotus 25 was effectively destroyed, Selzer and a friend decided to recreate R5 from the pieces they had accumulated. There is some controversy among people who care about these things about how much original stuff there was, ranging from most of an unusable wrecked monocoque to no more than a shoebox full of bits, but there is no claim made that there is any 1962 metal in the car as it exists today. The catalogue was remarkably (refreshingly, some would say) candid and complete in its candor: the car is a “recreation” rather than a “replica,” basically on the strength of a tenuous (but uncontested) historic continuity with the destroyed R5 chassis.

This car sold for a million bucks, more or less, which is a huge amount of money for any English Formula One car, and it did so with full disclosure that it wasn’t an original anything, just a recreation of a destroyed chassis. Does this make any sense? Actually, it does, and the reasoning is simple. The Lotus 25 is a hugely important car in racing history. A total of seven were built, and of these I think six (including this one) still exist. The others are all in museums or serious collections, and only one of those is reputed to be a running car.

Quite simply, this is the only Lotus 25 you could buy, and the only one that is actually able to race. It’s good enough and important enough to be welcomed anyplace you want to enter, and it’s quick enough to run at the front of any 1.5-liter F1 grid. Whoever bought it knew exactly what he was buying when he raised his paddle. If you want the history, beauty, and competitiveness that a Lotus 25 represents, that’s what it costs in today’s market. I’d say it’s a rational, if expensive, purchase.