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Posted by Uncle Pete (89 SE) on August 31, 2002 at 04:11:09:
In Reply to: soooo.....Lotuses are too light ;-)? nm posted by atomix on August 30, 2002 at 21:07:26:
As to Lotus road cars - in many ways they were ahead of their time, and the very small Lotus factory had the engineering skills to sustain their enormous performance but their manufacturing skills just weren't there. They could make them, but they couldn't make them as reliable as they should be. That said, the same could go for most supercars. How many people actually drive their Ferraris enough to see if they are reliable or not? Lotus cars were historically much more affordable so people would buy them to run as their daily drivers.
Chapman was obsessed with performance through lightness after it proved so successful in the Lotus 7. In the glory days of forumula 1 it can be seen that Jim Clark's Lotus was shatteringly fast but very fragile because Chapman so strictly adhered to his design policy.