STEVE HOLE tells us about the amazing Formula Ford Lotus that was road-legal.
Photos courtesy of Bonhams.com
So, what do you do if you have a batch of Formula Ford cars that are proving difficult to shift? Well, make the car in question road-legal and then you drive around central London and bring attention to it via the huge amount of publicity that will bring, especially if you get pulled over by Plod in Park Lane.
There as a bit more to it than that though so let’s start at the beginning.
Formula Ford, created by Brands Hatch boss, John Webb and his friend Geoff Clarke and boss of on-site racing school Motor Racing Stables in 1967. I think we all know what happened next. The ‘poor man’s way into motorsport’ said the publicity blurb, took off like a rocket.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Lotus boss Colin Chapman designed the Lotus 51, powered by a 1600 engine from the Ford Cortina, in 1967 specifically for Formula Ford. Derived from the Lotus 31 F3 car, it was priced at £955, comfortably fitting within the formula’s £1000 per car limit.
The problem was that with the Racing Car Show of January 1968 fast approaching they had a surplus of them that they needed to shift. So, it was the irrepressible, larger than life but brilliant motoring journalist, the late Nick Brittan and his editor at Car magazine, the Australian Doug Blain, who suggested to Lotus’ sales manager, and later the founder of Club Lotus, Graham Arnold that he should convert a 51 for road use.
He initially dismissed the idea as hokum although when Brittan outlined that not only would it bring Lotus and their 51 incredible publicity but it would form the basis of an amazing feature in Car magazine.
Brittan and Blain had worked out that back in 1947, plans and a temporary circuit plan had been drawn up that centred around London’s Park Lane and the internal road layout of Hyde Park.
Therefore, Arnold instructed Lotus Components to create a 51R (the ‘R’ denoting ‘Road’) which was duly put together and fitted with necessary stuff like indicators, mirrors and mudguards in time for the Racing Car Show. For whatever reason, when they rolled up to what was inexplicably renamed Autospeed ‘68 in early January, organiser of the event, BRSCC director, Ian Smith wouldn’t let the car into the show.
Arnold was disappointed but Brittan added it to the feature and early next morning they took to London’s Park Lane at the crack of dawn and Brittan climbed aboard, fired her up and took off along Park Lane and into Hyde Park, where he proceeded to not hang around. I think he spun it while on Park Lane.
I’m not sure if he went looking for a police car car to entice or the racket they were making just happened to attract a passing patrol car, but suffice to say that Brittan got pulled over. He waxed lyrical about the whole experience in the subsequent feature. I think the ‘Flower Power’ nickname came about when he was telling the policemen that they had been turned away from the show, which was a shame because the stand would have had dancing girls, dry ice and flowers or words to that effect. This was the day and age of Swinging hippy trippy London, of course.
The police, once satisfied that all was well, sent Brittan on his way and before returning to meet Arnold and Blain, he had a blast through the Park Lane tunnel before calling into the little petrol station (now an Esso station) at 77-83 Park Lane to fill the 51R up with finest 5 Star no doubt!
Lotus later sold the car for £1085 to a friend of Henry Ford, who transported it to his home in Bahamas where it stayed until 1990. ‘Flower Power’ came up for sale at a Bonhams auction in 2009 where it went under the hammer for £24,150!
A second car was sold to none other than Roger Williams, then of Willhire, East Anglia’s leading van and car hire company, who used it to promote his growing company, before he moved on and became known for the brilliant SS100 replica and Suffolk Sportscars.
Photos courtesy of Bonhams.com