[members] Fw: [ELCC] Colin Chapman and the Indianapolis 500...

[Mark Velky]

Fellow CLNW Members

    Passing it along. Good info. from Doug Jackson Chairman of the ELCC! I hope a Lotus fan takes a video and puts it on YouTube next week, but until then here is one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxJ0zODiw1I .

Mark


----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Douglas Jackson <douglasejackson at hotmail.com>
To: ELCC Members <elcc_org at googlegroups.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 10:58 AM
Subject: [ELCC] Colin Chapman and the Indianapolis 500...
 


 
Hello everybody:

First of all, Colin Chapman would have been 86 years old on May 19th if he hadn't died a long time ago.

Secondly, because the Indianapolis 500 race is to be run on this coming Memorial Day I thought that it might be fun to look back at the 1968 race in which four turbine powered, four-wheel drive, more-or-less wedge-shaped cars which were sponsored and entered by Andy Granatelli's STP corporation and raced by Team Lotus.

There is a nice article in the current issue of Lotus Ltd.'s Lotus ReMarque magazine about these very unusual cars (referred to as Type 56) which I'll pick a few things out of...

Of course, a special team of people was assembled at Hethel to bring these cars to life. This team was headed by Colin Chapman, designer Maurice Philippe and a small group of engineers. I suspect that when these cars were unloaded from their trailers
 for the first time at The Motor Speedway, people were pretty amazed!

During the race, one car failed right away, but the other three motored on very fast and smoothly for most of the race and one of them only stopped functioning properly (while in the lead!) very near the end. The story goes that because these unusual cars did so well, the were banned from ever entering this race again!

Clive Chapman (son of Colin) and Classic Team Lotus (CTL) undertook the complete restoration of the chassis and running gear of Type 56, Chassis 3 (the car driven by Graham Hill) and it will be featured with the other two Lotus turbine cars (one seems to have "gone missing") in a Parade Lap or two before this year's Indianapolis 500. Vince Granatelli (son of Andy) undertook the installation of the turbine power to get the car running properly again.

As Clive said toward the
 end of the rather short-fused restoration deadline, it was "all hands to the
 pumps" to get it done. There was a small team of people assigned to the project, but nearly everybody at CTL contributed some time to the job.

As Clive also said, "Happily Vince and I have managed to avoid the ups and downs that were a feature of the relationship between our mercurial fathers... so far".     



  
This is a picture I took of one of those STP/Team Lotus race cars. It was on display at LeMay - America's Car Museum for a while and I'm pretty sure that it is the "Graham Hill" car.


 
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