Weighing in at less than half a tonne (officially), propelled by a repurposed lightweight off-the-shelf firepump engine and clothed in a ground-hugging, air-cheating body from master aerodynamicist Frank Costin, in the entire history of Lotus it’s the Eleven that has best encapsulated the Chapman mantra of ‘simplify, then add lightness’. Maybe the 25 took it to an even higher level, but…
The Eleven’s success is reflected in the fact that some 270 were made, which was a huge number of top-tier sports racers to shift (largely for privateers) in just a couple of years towards the end of the 1950s – when Lotus was still finding its feet. That, in part, is due to the fact that ‘simple’ did not mean ‘old tech’. Quite the opposite. The Eleven was the first of Lotus’s sports-racers to be new from the ground up, previous efforts having used the MkVI as a base, though one MkIX (‘XPE 6’) was a clear missing link.
The Eleven started with a very lightweight steel tubular chassis (70lb) made up of 1in and ¾in tubes and constructed by Progress Chassis Co, clothed in Costin’s slippery bonnet, hand-beaten in aluminium by the artists at Williams & Pritchard. Installed in the front was Wally Hassan and Harry Mundy’s equally slender all-aluminium overheadcam 1098cc Coventry Climax FWA
