Lotus 12
The Lotus 12 was a racing car , built and used by the British motorsport team Lotus .
In the fall of 1956, the Lotus 12 was the first monoposto Lotus to appear at the London Motor Show . In the spring of 1957, the first test drives with the Formula 2 car took place. The vehicle was extremely narrow for a front-engined racing car, had a very light tubular space frame and was originally provided with double wishbones at the front and a De-Dion axle at the rear. Colin Chapman later changed the rear suspension, the rigid axle was omitted, trailing arms remained, the drive shafts as wishbones and there were long, inclined wheel-guiding struts . Chapman also used this type of wheel suspension in other models; it became known as the "Chapman axle". A 1.96-liter FPF engine from Climax served as drive , which was installed at a slight angle to the rear in order to keep the center of gravity low.
The Lotus 12 made its debut at Easter 1957 in Goodwood with Cliff Allison at the wheel. A few weeks later Herbert MacKay-Fraser made the first finish for a single-seater Lotus in a race at Brands Hatch .
When Lotus entered the Formula 1 World Championship in 1958 , the 12 Series was upgraded and converted. Graham Hill started his racing career at Lotus with the Lotus 12, which now had a 2 liter Climax engine. The best result for the 12er was Cliff Allison's sixth place at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix .
literature
- David Hodges: Racing cars from A – Z after 1945. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 .
