In the beginning, there was founder Colin Chapman, then a structural engineering student at University College, London, who had a second job selling used cars. Not everyone wanted an Austin Seven saloon, even in 1948; Chapman had one in stock that wasn’t shifting. Off came the body in favour of a marine ply effort, with cut-outs instead of doors, designed by Chapman in a lock-up behind his girlfriend’s parents’ home in Muswell Hill.
Thus the Lotus Mark 1 – a special in the time-honoured post-war British tradition – was born, having gained the name after appearing in competition bouts with a new registration plate. He would marry Hazel, his girlfriend, six years later.
New premises were needed in short order; Chapman and colleagues, including university friend Colin Dare, and business partners Michael and Nigel Allen, moved into former stables behind the Railway Hotel in Hornsey, a pub run by Chapman’s father, Stan. Over the next few years, the nascent Lotus would buy enough land to create a workshop and showroom, enabling development of successive Lotus ‘Marks’ to progress quickly. While the single-seater Mark 5 never left the drawing board, the aluminium panelled Mark 6 of 1952, on a bespoke steel-tube spaceframe chassis
