Silver dream machine

IT WOULD BE HARD TO UNDERESTIMATE just how bad things must have been at Lotus the day Margaret Thatcher came to visit on August 5, 1981. The original plan had been for her to come to the factory at Hethel, but a prime minister’s schedule is a busy one, so in the end it boiled down to a photo op at Norwich Airport a dozen miles away.

For props to represent its racing and road divisions, Lotus had brought a Formula 1 car and Lotus Esprit, the latter of which Thatcher drove and was reported in the local press to have said, “I was tempted to drive away in it.” The Formula 1 machine was the Lotus 88, perhaps the most revolutionary grand prix car in F1 history, boasting not only its famed twin chassis, but also a carbon-fibre monocoque that predated that of the McLaren MP4/1 (which usually takes the credit for being the first of its kind) and