Tom McCall Tests The Midship – Engined Europa.

From: Mechanix Illustrated – October 1967

To get a look at the new Lotus Europa, much less test it, involved problems only slightly less complicated than Ike faced in getting our troops from the land of 4 o'clock tea to the shores of Normandy.

You may be asking yourself, "Why bother to get a story on a strictly offbeat rig with a midship engine mounting?"

Well, if there is an answer to that question (and we feel there is) it's a guy named Colin Chapman. CC not only designed this squirrel but had it pieced together out of French and English parts in his brand-new factory located on an abandoned World War II air base in the wilds outside Norfolk, England. Chapman, who resembles a younger David Niven, is one of those once-in-a-lifetime engineering geniuses who pop up out of the world's woodwork every now and then.

Even as a student of engineering at London University in the mid-'40s,

Chapman's different approach to all things automotive attracted attention. While still an underclassman he was in the used-sports-car business. He reworked suspension and engines on some and turned out weird - at the time - vehicles for his college chums and other customers.

Chapman's first personal success came in English field trials with cars of his own design. Automotive field trials resemble off-road rallies and involve fording streams, waddling through mud and climbing steep hills. From the trials be went on to building or rebuilding cars for formula racing with unusual success.

In a few years he was sticking together traps that took the formula events at Le Mans and started winning big-time Grand Prix races. Stirling Moss was one of his top drivers and so was Graham Hill - and the Chapman cars were named Lotus for reasons best known to him. As far back as seven or eight years ago Lotus cars, in the hands of such chaps as Moss, Hill, Clark and Surtees, started ripping the Grand Prix world apart-much to the dismay of Enzo Ferrari's drivers.

To get a little closer to home, when the first factory Lotus, powered by a V8 Ford engine, made its initial appearance at Indianapolis in 1964 there was considerable snickering by the California contingent that had dominated this event for many years. When Jim Clark, a Scots sheepherder, wound up in second place, just missing a win by an eyeblink, West Coast thinking changed quickly.

By May '65, there were many backyard imitations of the Chapman-suspended car. Never before had anyone seen a car that could handle the insipid turns at Indy with such speed and ease. Clark took the Indy riot that year and by 1966, when Graham Hill, another Britisher, ran off with the clambake, two things had become apparent. The big V8 Ford engine was the power ticket and Chapman-type chassis and suspension were the rest of the sure-fire formula for winning the big ones.

More design changes took place in Indy cars, regardless of where built, between 1964 and 1967tban had taken place in the previous 30 years and this Chapman bloke triggered the whole shooting match.

For the reasons just mentioned, when word comes that Chapman is doing something new it creates more interest for the aficionados than General Motors would if it were to announce suddenly that it was giving up the manufacturing of automobiles in order to devote more attention to bicycles.

I arrived in London late in May, having crossed the pond in an opulent barge named the Queen Mary, and I knew Chapman would be leaving momentarily for Indy. A phone call to the Norfolk plant confirmed that he was leaving that afternoon. So without further ado and 125 mi. of traveling ahead, dauntless lensman Brooks Brender and I jumped into a new GT-6 Triumph and headed for Norfolk. After getting lost several times trying to find our way out of London, we finally got clear.

Nearing Norfolk, we started asking directions to Chapman's new factory and no one had heard of it so we got on the blower again. We had overshot our mark by 15 mi. and had to backtrack. Around a well-concealed rural corner we came to a World War II-vintage airport and the new House of Lotus.

As we skidded up to the front door I noticed a plane taxiing down the weed-laced runway and this, we soon learned, contained Chapman heading for London and the U.S.A. An assistant had been delegated to show us through the production line that had just been completed and we saw dozens of components, bodies and engines for slapping together to emerge as Europas.

My first impression on seeing the Europa was that here was a bolt basket that looks like it's doing 150 when parked, even though top speed is less than 115. The engine is mounted almost midships on a backbone frame. This frame design is much like that of the Lotus Elan we tested in May '64. Many of the components of the chassis are parts of English-made cars, including the steering by rack-and pinion and the telescoping steering column.

The engine is a French Renault 1470-cc 4-cylinder banger modified for more umph so that it develops just under 80 hp, or roughly 20 hp more than the standard engine. The cavity around the midship-mounted frog engine is roomy enough to accommodate a much hotter power plant of another make. But as this goes to press the entire production of Europas is scheduled to be sold in France. Due to crippling taxes in England, there are no plans to sell any of the cars in the homeland. Nor at this writing are there any plans for peddling them on our shores. Chapman's reasons for picking the French mill are obvious; he gets the completed car into France at low duty.

This unusual box of parts is a real eye-stopper and the few cars that already have made their way to France have created more of a stir than would Chuck de Gaulle if he started writing love letters to 10 Downing St. It seems a fairly safe bet, however, that some of these Europas will reach America either through the French market or direct. And that extra engine room is almost certain to be filled by hotter power plants than the Renault mill when the rod-and-custom boys get their hands on one of these rigs.

To get into this trap - and, believe me, trap is a pretty fair description - takes quite a bit of doing if you're much larger than a Singer midget. I made it, which more or less indicates that anyone could, but it was not easy. My entrance and exit hardly could be called graceful and were something like sliding under a low bed. Compared to the Europa, getting into a Ford Mk. III is a piece of cake. Due to fantastic styling, the Europa will have a lot of appeal for the young sports-car enthusiast but I feel the middle-age set will shun it.

Performance, with the top speed of about 113 or 114, does not match the car's looks and the 0-to-60 time of roughly 11 seconds won't cause much head-snapping either.

This hardly is an earth-shaking, high performance car at the moment, but with Chapman’s brand-new factory, one of the most modern in Europe, I can't help but feel that this new Europa is only a token of things to come from that big English weed patch.

Maybe more to the point for future hipsters, Chapman could be the man who will be instrumental in setting style and performance trends in that new breed of midship-engine sports cars we've been hearing about. Other than for a show car from Ford and some other experiments, the Europa is the first of this kind of rig. Certainly, it is the first produced for sale - even if Chapman has to take francs instead of real money. There couldn't be a better man for a trend-setting job.