Brian Muir at Brands Hatch during the 1969 BOAC International 500, held over the April 13 weekend.
Muir shared the car with Lotus engineer and soon to be GP driver, John Miles. The pair qualified the new car 16th, finishing 13th outright and first in the 2-litre Prototype class.
The race was a Porsche rout, with the Jo Siffert/Brian Redman, Vic Elford/Richard Atwood and Gerhard Mitter/Udo Schutz 908/02s taking the podium. The Chris Amon/PedroRodriguez Ferrari 312P was fourth, the JW Automotive Ford GT40 crewed by David Hobbs and Mike Hailwood fifth with the other Porsche works car – yes, it finished too – raced by Hans Hermann and Rolf Stommelen in sixth. The 908 was quite a machine, about as reliable a racer as the 911 was/is a roadie.
It’s all about the engine really, this car. It was to a large extent a development exercise for the Lotus Vauxhall 2-litre LV240 Type 904 engine which, with lots of development, replacement of the Vauxhall block with bespoke Lotus alloy unit, and a whole lot more, later powered a couple of generations of Lotuses for 25 years or so. More about the engines gestation and useage at the end of this piece.
The arguments within Lotus Components about the location of the dry-sump oil tank would have been interesting! It’s all Tecalemit Jackson fuel injection componentry isn’t it. The metering unit is sharing the distributor drive (below). See the oil filter, “The heavy oil tanks sits too high Martin!” you can feel Our Col saying to designer Martin Waide. “Yep, I know but this car has bodywork Colin, I can’t shove it wherever I like compared with the open-wheelers.
A ZF 5DS five speed manual gearbox sits where a Hewland FT200 transaxle really belongs. Doncha-reckon Chapman said “use one of those things” and pointed to one of the ZFs pensioned off when Lotus got with the strength and fitted Hewland DG300s to the Lotus 49Bs?
240bhp @ 8000rpm is claimed for the 1992cc, twin-cam, four-valve, oversquare (95.3mm x 69.9mm bore/stroke) cast iron block, aluminium head engine. See the nicely boxed reinforcements for the top-hats of the coil spring damper units and cable drive for the Smiths chronometric tach. Plenty of Aeroquip there too, it’s coming into vogue…
The Lotus Europa parentage is clear enough, but parentage is putting things crudely, there is nothing Europa about this car other than the body. Two of these purpose built Group 6 racers were built. The thing clearly didn’t want to turn-in given the aero experimentation shown in this series of shots.
Front end detail, spaceframe chassis and conventional for the day front suspension comprising upper and lower wishbones, alloy uprights, coil spring/damper units and roll bar. Disc brake rotors are 12-inch Girlings, who also provided the calipers, weight of the car is circa 1250 pounds.
On the hop through Bottom Bend. The other cars in the 2-litre prototype class at this meeting were Chevron B8 Ford, Ferrari Dino 206S, Nomad Mk1 BRM, Abarth 2000S and Ginetta G16A BRM. The Muir/Miles Lotus 62 won the class from the Beeson/DeCadenet Dino and Blades/Morley B8 Ford.
Lots of sheet aluminium to reinforce the tubular chassis. Lotus cockpits of this era, open and closed are the yummiest of workplaces. Attention to detail and finish of their racing cars is exceptional, while freely acknowledging the under-engineering on way too many occasions that also went into the package…
Hard to tell who is up? Mechanic’s names welcome. That’s one of the four Porsche System Engineering 908/02s behind, the numbers of which all started with a 5…I can see the short-arse driver but cannot pick him.
History of the 900 Series Lotus Engines by Tim Engel…
The production 9XX engines are Lotus designs. To expedite development, early versions of the cylinder head was bolted onto a Vauxhall block. No non-Lotus blocks were used beyond the first prototype iteration (904) and certainly not in production. Whether the 907 is a blueblood or a bastard is one that periodically comes up.
16 Apr 1997, Erik Berg <Erik.Berg@trw.com> wrote: OK, does anyone know more about the history of the development of the 62 engine? My recollection is that it was *not* in fact a 900 series engine, but was a four-valve head adaptation of the existing Vauxhall 2-litre block.
The Mk 62’s 904 engine was a development mule for the 907, and was a composite of a Vauxhall 2-litre iron-block assembly, a Lotus-spec’d, longer stroke crank and a Lotus prototype cylinder head. Lotus recognised that the most development intensive part of the engine design was going to be the head. To expedite head development without waiting for the complete engine to be designed and prototyped, they ‘borrowed’ the cylinder block from the very similarly sized/ configured (slant four) Vauxhall Victor 2.0 and mated it to the prototype head.
Later, the Mk 62 received the 906 engine, which was a further development of the Lotus design with a prototype sand-cast aluminum block. The 906 eliminated the Vauxhall crutch that had allowed the development program to get a faster jump start and got the engine closer to it’s final, all-Lotus design.
The Mk 62 car was built as much as a development test bed for the new engine as a race car. It was felt that racing the engine would accelerate the learning curve.
The aluminum 907 block is very different from the iron Vauxhall block and not just an alloy adaptation of an existing design. However, it’s probably (I’m jumping to a conclusion) more than coincidence that the bore centers are the same. The head was first designed to fit the Vauxhall block. Once that was done, why incur the extra work of re-designing it to fit a different bore spacing? Just design your new block to fit the head that was developed in advance of the rest of the program.
- Iron block 2.0 race engine with T-J fuel injection, July ’68 (aka, LV220 = Lotus-Vauxhall, 220bhp)
- Iron block 2.0 road car engine (non-production, test only).
- 906 Sand-cast aluminum block 2.0 race engine (aka, LV240)
- Die-cast aluminum block 2.0 road car engine
- Aluminum block 4.0 V8 race engine
- Aluminum block 4.0 V8 road engine
- Die-cast aluminum block 2.2 Turbo road car engine
- Die-cast aluminum block 2.2 N/A Sunbeam-Talbot engine
- Die-cast aluminum block 2.2 N/A Lotus road car engine
The 904 had a 95.25mm (3.75 in) bore x 69.85mm (2.75 in) stroke for a 1995 cc displacement… just under the racing class limit. The similar Vauxhall Victor 2000 used the same 95.25 bore, but a shorter 69.25 stroke for a 1975 cc displacement. As installed, the 904 crank was a Lotus specific part; however, I don’t know if it was machined from a Vauxhall blank or made from scratch.
Later, the 907 used the same 95.25 (3.75) bore as the Vauxhall, but with a claimed 69.2 (2.72) stroke/ 1973 cc displacement. Just a weeee bit smaller than the Vauxhall engine. The Elite/Eclat/Esprit manuals give the bore dimension to 4 decimal places, but leave the stroke at 69.2 (2.72).
I wouldn’t doubt (but I don’t know) that the stroke and displacement numbers (.05mm / 2cc smaller than the Vauxhall) were more of a weak marketing attempt to give the 907 it’s own non-Vauxhall identity by simply rounding off the numbers.
The 907 was supposed to be an important step for Lotus in establishing itself as a stand-alone manufacturer. However, when Lotus fast-started it’s development program by basing the first prototypes on the Vauxhall block, the press grabbed onto the Lotus-Vauxhall identity with a death grip and Chapman couldn’t break it. After a while, hearing the press continually refer to his new engine as a Vauxhall or Lotus-Vauxhall started to SERIOUSLY rub Chapman the wrong way.
Etcetera…
In a previous life I was CEO and a partner in one of Australia’s best graphic design and branding firm. I saw plenty of corporate identity standards manuals along the way but never one where the client felt the need to define the plural of the entity, as Chairman Chapman or his PR apparatchiks felt the need to do.
I don’t think anybody took any notice either, ‘Lotuses’ seems to have been in common use since Jim Clark was in shorts. I used Loti until someone observed that I had a touch of the Setrights. So I stopped.
Clearly the name of ‘our car’ is officially the Lotus 62 Europa albeit I follow the racing car nomenclature practice started by DC Nye and some of his buddies during the 1960s, viz; make-model-engine maker, that is Lotus 62 Vauxhall. Mind you, a more accurate description is perhaps Lotus 62 Lotus-Vauxhall given the mix of Lotus and Vauxhall mechanicals, mind you that sounds shit. How bout Lotus 62 Vauxhall-Lotus. Nah, that’s not too flash either. I think Lotus 62 Vauxhall will do the trick, application of the KISS Principle is always the way to go.
Credits…
MotorSport Images, Tim Engel 900 engine article on gglotus.org, bedfordcf2van.blogspot.com, Bruce Wellings
Tailpiece…
I wonder who took out the rest of the BOAC sign? An expensive accident no doubt.
Finito…
primotipo... 