Text | Karakush
Lotus is probably the most mysterious car brand in the world.
Just about the origin of Lotus's soft sister name, there are no less than eight hundred theories: girlfriend-given, all-night car sleepy, mantra upside down... Each one is random, and founder Colin Chapman hasn't given a proper word — except in 1963.
In "F1 Earth Dream" (F1 Earth Dream), Ebata Takuya mentions that that year Lao Cha went to Japan to find Ryo Nakamura, the director of the Honda F1 team at the time, and when they drank a lot of wine in a nightclub at night, He told Nakamura that he liked East Asian philosophy very much when he was in college, and lotus was a symbol of nirvana in Buddhism, so he took the name.
However, the business ate at the wine table cannot be fully trusted.
A more reliable source is Clive Chapman, the son of the elder Chapman. According to his recollection, the old father always nicknamed the old mother Lotus Blossom, and the name may have come from such shame. But this statement has no chance of being officially recognized by the parties involved, so the name lotus has become an eternal secret.
It was in the lady's garage that Sr. Cha used the Austin 7 to create his first racing car, the Mark I; and three years later, together they built the true first Lotus Mark III.
So traceably, Lotus is a mechanical love letter made by a 20-year-old London spirit boy.
Ordinary people's love letters contract fish ponds with empty checks; Lao Cha's love letters contract the world with technology and speed. For a long time, Lotus was an unusually winning guy, and he only wanted to win in a way that he agreed with, and he had a very awkward attitude.
Magic: Not just light
When Charlie went to find Nakamura, Lotus team won most of the races of the year, and they were the 1963 F1 champions. The race car is equipped with a V8 engine produced by the British homegrown Coventry Climax company, and the old Cha wants to change to a better one. For example, Honda was vigorously promoting the V12 at that time.
However, the formal cooperation with Honda will not be more than two decades later. This did not prevent Lotus from becoming the monopoly king of F1 in the 60s and 70s. The Grand Prix is hard to forget Lotus: 7 F1 Manufacturers Annual Championships, 6 F1 Drivers' Championships, 81 F1 Division Championships. In addition to F1, there are nine Le Mans Grand Prix group winners, one Indy 500 champion and one World Rally Championship champion.
Perhaps only the track can reflect Lotus's true status, which is worthy of being on par with the Prancing Horse Bull. If Enzo Ferrari had been an engineer who had turned to racing, not a real-time entrepreneur, he might have built Lotus.
In reality, when the old Ferrari man first met the old man, he called the latter a "designers garagistes"—a man who couldn't build an engine. As a result, the independent "garage designer" left the Ferrari old man bald.
Lotus's greatest treasure is lightweight and aerodynamics, an advantage that began to stand out after the car's speed increased by a general increase. The old Cha's design philosophy was based on the understanding and reuse of aeronautical engineering techniques, so Lotus focused on the flexible use of air like a flying machine, rather than increasing horsepower like a normal car.
It turned out that this really grasped the race point, making the body more stable through downforce, bringing better handling, often beating Ferrari's omnipotent high-horsepower front-facing engine. So much so that when the F1 championship was snatched away by lotus teams, Ferrari's old man was so angry that he shouted: "People who can't build a good engine will study aerodynamics." ”
Old Cha believes that increasing horsepower can make you faster in straight lines, and reducing weight can make you faster anywhere. "Simplified and light" is like a mudslide that makes mainstream automakers unintelligible and shaken, and also makes the FIA often follow the old check to revise the F1 rules - some technologies are so powerful that collective bugs have to be banned.
One of the most deadly examples is the ground effect. Old Cha installed a side skirt on the bottom of the side box of the car, the side skirt was sealed between the bottom of the body and the road, and the air duct formed inside would make the air flow flow faster, creating negative pressure at the bottom of the car, so that the entire body was firmly attached to the track and obtained more downforce. Lotus introduced it to F1 in the late 1970s, winning six consecutive games and eventually winning the Constructors' Championship and Drivers' Championship of the Year.
This led to the involution of other teams and the development of their own ground efficiency cars. However, due to the increasing speed and increasing force, the uneven bumps on the ground will make the ground effect very uncontrollable, resulting in casualties. In 1982, after Ferrari had unfortunately lost two drivers as a result, the FIA banned the effects.
But Lotus didn't stop. In the repeated struggle of continuous technological innovation, technical involution, technology banning, re-innovation, re-rolling, and re-banning, it has gradually changed the rules of road cars and racing cars, making pneumatics a serious topic. Even the Ferrari old man later could not deny that Colin Chapman was "brilliant in cutting-edge insights".
The track has made many talents, but the only genius with a gladiatorial temperament like this may be Chapman.
His keen talent for mechanics, his insatiable insatiability with victory, remained in Lotus's genes, leaving many shocking designs for the world today: wedge-shaped locomotives, side-mounted cooling boxes, top air intake boxes, hard-shell chassis, active suspension, wind-setting wings, Chapman suspensions, etc., some of which are still widely used by us today.
Behind many of the world's most famous labels and models, there are Lotus brand names – not only technology penetration. Lotus built its own cars, but also helped other car companies to build good cars, which was first the manual interest of Lao Cha, and gradually developed into an industry such as Lotus Engineering. For example, the Nissan GTR, Aston Martin DB9, DMC-12 are all supported by Lotus.
The most familiar case in contemporary times is Tesla's first-generation Roadster. In 2004, Tesla, including Musk, knew nothing about automotive engineering, and the two founders approached Roger Becker, then-Lotus chief engineer, at the Los Angeles Auto Show and forced him to agree to help.
Although Tesla always emphasizes that the Roadster is not an electric magic modification of Lotus Elise (and it is), Lotus's presence is really difficult to ignore.
Tesla received key technology licenses for the Elise chassis, on the basis of which the Roadster chassis was designed, so the two are highly similar in suspension and occupant protection systems. At the same time, Lotus Engineering also provides Tesla with engineering, styling, and supply chain support. Tesla obtained a huge number of patent licenses from Lotus, and it can be said that without this deep and mutual trust cooperation, there would be no story of Tesla's subsequent rapid mass production.
Rebel boy
Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard explained it on his official website.
The reason why Lotus died was because he was hungry, Elise's chassis was too genius, and second, because Lotus was one of the very few companies in the world to build cars for competitors. The Vauxhall VX-220 and Opel Speedster were built on the same production line that Lotus manufactures Elise and Exige, and their assembly lines are designed to be of different types on the same line, which is very rare.
This open wildness permeates decision-making at all levels.
For example, he appeared in "Pretty Lady of the Wind and Moon". In this popular Hollywood film, the financial giant actor played by Richard Keele is lost in Hollywood in an exotic high-end sports car, and fatefully meets the heroine of the street girl played by Julia Roberts, and the two develop a long-lasting relationship at the touch of a button. This love sports car is the 1989 Lotus Esprit SE.
In fact, at that time, the film company also looked for Ferrari and Porsche. Ferrari angrily refused after reading the script, because the heroine's initial setting was a dusty woman, they did not want to have anything to do with each other, and even strongly issued a ban, prohibiting the film company from buying Ferrari privately for filming. Porsche, on the other hand, is very sensitive to Hollywood because Tom Cruise used the Porsche 928 in the movie "Pretty Boy Crazy" without authorization.
On the other side, Lotus also read the script, felt that there was no problem, said bluntly, and took it at once, and took four cars at once. In the end, of course, the movie was a huge success, and no one despised the use of cars because of a girl who was determined to read and change her life... In fact, thanks to the film, Esprit's sales tripled in the next two years.
Even if it is a business decision, it is still a rebellious brand, as long as it thinks it is right, even if others of the same era think it is wrong, it will not care to do it. The struggle of The Soul Douluo did not come from the thorn, but only from the rejection of boredom: yeah, why not?
In fact, when the production assistant nominated Lotus, the producer who did not pay attention to the car was confused, could it support the identity of the top class of society like Ferrari and Porsche. The assistant said the 007 had also driven one. The producer picked up the phone and made an international call with Heysel, England.
It was 007, 1978's "Underwater City", which Lotus Esprit turned into a submarine after a fierce land chase. This is considered a classic in the history of filmmaking, laying the foundation for the appearance of all submarine cars in the future. Ken Adam, the filmmaking designer in charge of the design, is actually a Lotus owner and an admirer of Esprit's streamlined form.
Ugly and boring people may always get together because of aesthetics.
Raymond Benson, author of seven "official" Bond novels, once put it this way: "I've never used an underwater car in any Bond novel, but the Lotus in the movie is one of my favorite vehicles in the 007 universe!" ”
Next E, E-lectric
It is a randomly fluctuating soul, rebellion and innovation across time, all the way to today's new energy era.
They founded Lotus Technologies last year and officially announced their future strategic plan to invest 26.3 billion yuan to fully embrace electrification. A complete "betrayal" is very exciting for a brand with a 74-year history of fuel treasures. In terms of technical reserves, Lotus has been doing new energy exploration. They have developed evora 410 E electric vehicles and have also done pure electric product development for other brands, such as Rolls-Royce.
It may be destined to become an electrified brand.
Friends familiar with Lotus know that Lotus has an "E" naming tradition - the original Lotus is all Ironman naming format: MARK I, MARK II, MARK III...
Until the launch of MARK 11. The car media teacher at the time said that he liked the pronunciation of "Lotus Eleven" rolling over the tip of his tongue; coupled with avoiding confusion between Roman numerals and Arabic numerals - the Arabic numeral "11" looked like the Roman numeral "II" (ii), so the old Cha used full spelling instead and gave up "Mark", which has never appeared since.
And all models after Even must start with E, which is also casual: Elise, Exige, Evora... More than 70 years later, it's always Electric's turn.
Electric Lotus is still rebelling, pursuing the ultimate, and pursuing to outperform everyone. The latest model, codenamed Type 132, will be a pure electric supercar SUV, 100 meters to accelerate into the 3s, it inherits the lotus brand concept, even if there is a 5 meters long body, it can also achieve a track-level driving experience.
With the help of intelligent driving assistance, Lotus said, "As long as you have a driver's license, you can win the F1 championship".
Well，why not.