Ahead of the 1970 Can-Am season, Lotus founder Colin Chapman had tasked Team Lotus draughtsman Geoff Ferris to mock up a racer of their own for the lucrative series. However, with Chapman’s focus firmly set on their successful Formula One campaign, the project was shelved, never passing the scale model phase. That is, until today, when Lotus have revived the long-lost fire breathing race car for an ultra-limited run of just 10 examples, each priced at over a million dollars. We present to you the Lotus Type 66.
Clive Chapman, son of Colin Chapman and Managing Director of Classic Team Lotus, was instrumental to this project, for it was the documents he held which allowed the Lotus Design team to bring the car to life. Clive commented, “The car would have shared many innovative features with our most successful F1 chassis, the Lotus Type 72, which was developed during the same era. It would have been spectacular, as is the actual Type 66 we see today.” Resplendent in the heritage-inspired red, white and gold colours Lotus raced in during the early 1970s, the Type 66 truly is a thing of beauty.
After more than half a century of technical progress, it would be a shame not to build on Colin Chapman’s early designs, and so they have been delicately reinterpreted to conform to 21st century safety standards and driving expectations. New features include a modernised driver compartment, inboard fuel cell, sequential transmission and anti-stall system. More than 1,000 hours of Computation Fluid Dynamics work has gone into honing the Type 66’s body, resulting in over 800 kilos of downforce at 150mph, far more than the original would have managed.
Also improved is the car’s mid-mounted, period-representative V8 push-rod engine, which aims to put out more than 830bhp at 8,800rpm. The iconic Can-Am-inspired air intake trumpets are obviously the Type 66’s party piece, which not only look amazing, but help improve the power output too. Overall, the Type 66 is a truly stunning work of engineering, and a car that would have surely struck fear in the hearts of its Can-Am competition.
