The
author sat in BOA 225
Section I A brief history of the Lotus 7 Clones
The basic concept of the Lotus Seven and its latest clone, the Robin Hood 2B series of cars, are as long as motoring itself. The original automobile had an open 2 seater body, 4 wheels, a rag top & cycle mudguards. It was also a front engined rear wheel drive car. Just take a look at any early sports motor car, only the style and the engineering have changed. Owning a car until the 50's was for most people just a dream, push bikes and motorcycles were as good as it got. Herbert Austin's Seven was a deliberate attempt to "knock the motorcycle and sidecar into a cocked hat" this was his stated aim, and of course he did just that. After WWII material shortages meant that most car production was for export. Those cars that did reach the UK market attracted a premium. Slowly cars became more readily available but still out of the reach of most people, especially Apprentices. There had been a technological leap during WWII, not only in design and materials, but in mass production methods as well, this put onto the market many pre-war second hand cars, now regarded as obsolete, at more or less scrap prices. The bodies may have rusted away but the Engine & Chassis still had many years life.
This availability of cheap obsolete cars spawned the "Special" built by many Engineering Apprentices as a way into getting a motor. Ironically, in many factories in the Midlands, the first person to own a car was very often one of the Apprentice's who had built a car himself, usually in works time !! The Austin 7 Car Club was very active during this period when along came Colin Chapman, later to become the founder of Lotus. Another designer called Jem Marsh, later to found Marcos, produced the first " Lotus 7 " type body style, the Speedex 750 and Chapman (never slow to copy a good idea) saw in this design a niche market mass producing kit cars and the Lotus 7 was born (the connection between the Lotus 7 & the Austin 7 is not mere coincidence) The car was available as a self build kit or as a factory built car. It was delivered to your garage in a large wooden crate as a 100% complete kit. It was not a particularly good car by today's standards but in1960 it was the car to own. The photo below is my Austin 7 Special BOA 225 This was my first " kit car " The 2B is my last !!
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The
author sat in BOA 225
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It became famous as the car in the long running TV serial " The Prisoner " starring Patric McGoohan, this cult series has just started a re-run BBC 4 and is also featured in a series of magazine articles. (December 2004) This design was to set a style that has so far lasted 40 years and seems to be capable of going on for ever. As Lotus moved upmarket and other manufactures joined the cheap sports car market, Austin Healey Sprite, MG Midget, Triumph Spitfire etc. the design rights were sold to Caterham, a local Lotus dealer. Caterham are still going strong and for this genre are probably the market leader together with Westfield, Birkin ad nausea. All very very expensive.
Ron Champion's book on building a Sports Car for £250, again a Lotus 7 clone, also seems to have given one or two people food for thought. And now we have the present day version of the original Lotus 7, the Robin Hood 2B. Below is an early press photo of a Series 1 Lotus 7 Apart from the absence of a roll bar it could easily pass off as a modern Robin Hood 2B
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Series
1 Lotus 7
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© Colin Usher 2005