Returning to the United Kingdom earlier this year, our ever-intrepid club president Ashton Roskill took the opportunity to scout out some Lotus adventures in the homeland. Over the next few days, we’re going to share some of his stories here on the website.

Today, with great envy, we learn of his visit to Classic Team Lotus, in which he got up close and personal with the motorsport history of Lotus, and gained a greater appreciation for the beauty of historic race cars.

By Ashton Roskill

While we were over in the United Kingdom, we were lucky enough to visit Clive Chapman and the Classic Team Lotus offices and workshops just down the road (literally) from Hethel.

Clive was very welcoming, and we had a wonderful chat about the fun and games he is having with his Eleven. The yellow Eleven, restored by Bob Dance a few years back, used to belong to his father, who you may know of! It is apparently one of very few Lotus cars Colin actually bought with his own hard-earned.

I had hoped to catch Bob to discuss the car, but he was at Donnington shaking down John Bower’s Lotus 25 R4 prior to it going to the Duns Weekend, and thence directly on to Monaco for the Historic Grand Prix. However, in Bob’s absence, Colin’s very able Marketing Manager, Sapphire Whitbread, kindly showed me around.

This year for the first time, CTL will be campaigning an Elite (as you can tell – the engine was out being rebuilt when this shot was taken), and it was amazing to be able to be so close to cars such as these – I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed being there.. I particularly enjoyed the sight of the guys having tea, sat around the nose cone of Chris Locke’s type 75!

Thanks to Ashton Roskill. We’d love to hear about your Lotus adventures, so if you have a Lotus story that you would like to share with the club, we’d love to hear from you! Just send a quick email to Seth and say ‘Hi!’