Yet he could obstinately follow a false trail, and distractions, for example into power boat manufacture in the early 1970s or microlight aircraft projects a decade on, when Lotus affairs demanded his full attention he was chief executive of a car company, and for years he was manager of a Grand Prix team, and was the inspiration and design trouble-shooter for both.

Colin Chapman often faced enormous commercial problems, and his business philosophies might have been rated sharp, his practices sometimes verging on questionable, but his marque survived hard times. It also survived his early death, after a heart attack in December 1982, and the mystique of Lotus is still strong.

In the years immediately after the Second World War, two students at University College , London , bought and sold small cars as a sideline. Chapman's partner in this wheeler-dealer business 'retired' in 1947, and late that year the market collapsed under him. Eventually, he reduced his stock to an unsaleable 1930 Austin Seven, which he started to rebuild before deciding to make a trials car out of it. This was to be completed in a garage belonging to the father of his girlfriend Hazel Williams, whom he was to marry in 1954. He chose to call this car 'Lotus Mk F the reason was never explained, save that he did not want it known as another Austin Special.

National Service in the RAF meant that Lotus Mk II took shape slowly through 1949; he competed with it at Silverstone in June 1950, and that gave him a new passion.

Lotus entered a new phase with the III. This also started life as a one-off special (for 750 Formula racing), but a replica was built, then the IIIB for llOOcc racing. It was the first car to carry the badge that was to become famous, incorporating an ACBC monogram (Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman).

Another III was built, then another trials car. The car operation now carried on in the old stables behind his father's pub in North London was still a second occupation for Chapman he did not leave British Aluminium until 1954 and for a while had two full-time professional jobs so his partner Michael Allen was Lotus' first full-time worker. On the first day of 1952 Lotus Engineering was formed, and that year Chapman designed the Mk 6. In 1953 it was 'in production, so it is the first Lotus profiled in this book.

That year Mike Costin joined, on a part-time basis until 1955. He was to become technical director before he left in 1962, some time after he had formed Cosworth Engineering with another talented and highly practical designer who also spent time with Lotus, Keith Duckworth.

Lotus Cars Limited came into being in 1955.The demand for its aerodynamic sports-racers and kits for the chunky Seven meant that the stables became very congested, and Lotus moved to a purpose-built factory at Cheshunt in 1959; it was to be the base through a period of commercial and racing success, but Lotus soon started to outgrow it. For a new site, Chapman looked for a disused military airfield apart from land for buildings, this could provide facilities for his own aviation and a test track. He settled on the 22.5 hectare (55 acre) one-time USAF base at Hethel near Norwich Airport , and Lotus completed another move late in 1966. Meanwhile, as Cheshunt opened, Lotus Components Limited had been formed, to look after customer racing cars and the Seven. It was to last until 1972, for its final two years as Lotus Racing, and run from 1969 by the energetic Mike Warner. He was soon disenchanted. The Seven did not fit into Chapman's scheme to move Lotus up-market, and there was little or n o profit in building racing cars for sale, so both were abandoned.

More positively, Tony Rudd joined from BRM in 1969, and was soon to become Technical Director and be responsible for real progress on the production car side. Lotus was floated as a public company, and that proved to be a mixed blessing. For all his business activities, Chapman was not a natural tycoon, and in the 1970s he was to spend more time away from Hethel, at nearby Ketteringham Hall, where his design department, research and development unit, and Team Lotus, were based.

In the mid-1970s sales were poor, and while Chapman was to become preoccupied with Team Lotus for a while, he looked to design and engineering consultancy to provide compensating income for Lotus Cars, as he would again in the early 1980s (Lotus Engineering and Technology was formally set up in 1980). In 1981 only 345 cars were sold, and Grand Prix fortunes slumped. As the De Lorean scandals loomed in the 1980s, there was a complex refinancing package, COLLABORATION with David Wickens briefly taking the helm as Chairman. Alan Curtis took his place, until Group Lotus plc Chief Executive Mike Kimberley took on the role in 1991. There was some lack of continuity at management levels, and for the factory floor staff, too (Lotus had always been staunchly opposed to trade union activity and in the past its workers had been accustomed to switching from building customer racing cars to road cars as demand fluctuated, while in Spring 1992 all production was halted for five weeks, and little more than a year later the decision to end Elan production cost 300 jobs). On the plus side, Tony Rudd won for Lotus a commission to develop the V8 for GM's ZR1 Corvette.

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