Sleek but Deadly

[tbutler]

A lot of the history of race cars is slow, steady change. But sometimes there's a revolution.

Meet the 1964 Lotus Indy Car.

Up to this point, the racing mantra was power, power, power. Race car designers kept pushing for more and more engine output, at the cost of larger and heavier engines. Unfortunately, heavier engines required heavier frames to hold them, and when you were done part of the power increase had been eaten by the weight increase. And heavier cars had other disadvantages; cornering, for one, because inertia wants to make a heavier car keep going in a straight line.

Colin Chapman, the designer who founded Lotus, had a different idea. Instead of going for the most power possible, go for the lightest weight possible; the engine would have to be smaller, but the weight loss would make up for that. And there were other benefits; a lighter car would corner better, use less fuel, and cause less damage in an accident. So the body/frame was a light monocoque design, the engine was rear-mounted, and the entire car was cut to the bare minimum necessary.



The formula still needed some tweaking before it won; this was the first revision, which did well but had to drop out of the race when the tires blew. But before long, this became the Indy Car template.



There was one more major change to go before the Indy Car reached the form we're familiar with today - but this was a huge step along the way. And frankly, this is probably my favorite stage; there's a very clean purity of line that's lost in the final (to date) stage.

(...and is it just me, or does the first pic make it look almost like a predatory fish?)