LOTUS 23 At the 1962 Niirburgring 1000km race, a little 11 litre four-cylinder Ford-engined Lotus,

With typical Niirburgring "wet-and-dry" conditions helping, the little Lotus was 101sec ahead by lap 7; after a further circuit its driver, the future World Champion Jim Clark, had increased his lead to over 2 minutes. It could not last; as the roads dried the Ferraris and Porsches with twice the brake horsepower and more began to catch up. Finally the combination of fading brakes, a gear jumping out, and exhaust fumes escaping from a broken tailpipe proved the Lotus' undoing on lap 11, when a dazed and "woozy" Clark lost control and ended up in a ditch. Seldom had a new competition

Clean and simple: The fleet little Lotus 23 sports-racing car in 1962 form, when available with 997, 1,097 or 1,599cc Ford pushrod ohv engines for private owners to buy and race. Its design was based on the 22 Formula Junior single-seater, with full-width, fibreglass-panelled bodywork

Lotus 23 model made a more striking Interna-tional debut, underlining what limited but tractable power in a light, control-lable car could do in difficult circum-stances. The Lotus 23 first came into public view at the Racing Car Show at Olympia, London, in January 1962. It was not their first sports-racing car, of course, antecedents designed by the illustrious Colin Chapman including the Mark 6 and 7 clubmen's "kit" cars, the Marks 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 and 17 sports-racers, all front-engined, and the rear-engined Mark 19 or Lotus Monte Carlo, developed from the Type 18 Formula 1 car, and which gained numerous prominent wins in Britain, USA and Canada. Like the 19, the 23 was the direct descendant of a single-seater, the Formula Junior Lotus which, as the Mark 20, practically swept the FJ board in 1961, and was succeeded a year later by the improved and equally successful 22. Apart from its wider frame and full-width two-seater bodywork and sporting equipment, the 23 was virtually identical mechanically to the 22 which shared the same stand at Olympia. Its chassis com-prised a multi-tubular space frame built up from square, rectangular and small-diameter round tubing, with fabricated steel bulkheads. The suspension, always a Lotus strong point, was independent all round, using coil springs and double wishbones at the front, and coil springs with single top link, lower wishbone

and parallel radius arms at the rear. Coaxial telescopic dampers, rack-and-pinion steering and disc brakes featured, and 13M wheels assisted in keeping a low profile. Coming in that era before aerodynamic efficiency seemed to mean aesthetic offence, the 23 had a clean, simple open body with fibreglass panels, a small intake low in the nose, a shallow, steeply raked screen merging each side into the rear wings, and a short tail. As it ran at Niirburgring in 1962 the engine was a pre-production example of the q litre Ford 116E "Classic" five-bearing unit, fitted with a twin overhead-camshaft alloy head designed for Lotus by Harry Mundy of Jaguar and Coventry Climax fame. The camshafts were driven by roller chain off the front end of the crankshaft, and the inclined valves were operated, Jaguar-fashion, by inverted bucket-type tappets which also enclosed the valve springs. The inlet manifolds were cast into the head, and carried twin Weber carbu-rettors, and this 1,499cc unit gave an initial 100bhp at 5,900rpm, with more power obviously in reserve pending further development. The first engine to bear the name Lotus, it was destined to power the future Elan road car and also the Lotus-Cortina high-performance saloon, the Niirburgring race being chosen as a suitable long-distance test for the new unit. A special Lotus 23 with smaller 997cc twin-cam Anglia-.