Lotus Mark VI

Lotus Mark VI at a glance

The Mark VI is where the road-car history of Lotus begins; the full story is told in our history of the Lotus car company. All Lotus models are listed in the Lotus catalogue.

History: from trials specials to a series car

Before the Mark VI, Colin Chapman had built several cars for trials and road racing. In 1952 he introduced the Mark VI, the first Lotus that was made in a series for customers. To keep costs down, it used many mechanical parts from the Ford Prefect, which were cheap and easy to find.

The car was a success with amateur racers. By 1955 about 100 had been built, and Wikipedia's infobox gives a total of about 110. Production ended in 1957, when the Lotus Seven took over as the company's entry-level model.

Space frame and kit form

The heart of the Mark VI is its chassis: a semi-space frame of small steel tubes, six feet long and weighing only 25 kg. The prototype chassis was built by the Progress Chassis Company, and the aluminium body was made by the panel beaters Williams and Prichard.

Lotus sold the Mark VI as a kit. Customers received the chassis and body and could install their own engine and gearbox. The frame had mounting points for several engines:

• the 1,172 cc Ford 10;
• the 1,250 cc or 1,500 cc MG TF engine;
• the 1,500 cc Ford Consul engine;
• Coventry Climax engines.

This made each Mark VI slightly different, depending on what its owner could afford or wanted to race.

Engine and performance

Wikipedia's data for the standard car refers to the Ford E93A engine: a 1,172 cc side-valve four-cylinder with two valves per cylinder and no supercharging. It produces 37 kW (50 bhp) at 5,000 rpm and 77 Nm at 3,000 rpm, a specific output of about 32 kW (43 bhp) per litre. Power goes to the rear wheels through a three-speed Ford manual gearbox.

With a weight of only 432 kg, even this modest engine made the car lively: 0–60 mph took 15 seconds and the top speed was about 150 km/h.

Racing record

On British circuits the Mark VI was a frequent winner. It often beat more powerful and more expensive cars thanks to its light weight, its handling and its acceleration. The car still appears in historic racing: in 2009 the musician Chris Rea drove a Mark VI at the Goodwood Revival.

From Mark VI to Seven

The Mark VI's direct successor was the Lotus Seven of 1957, which replaced it as Lotus's entry-level model. The Seven looks similar but uses a different tubular frame. It was also sold mainly as a kit in Britain, because under the purchase tax rules of the time kits avoided a tax surcharge — as long as no assembly instructions were included. This lasted until 1973, when the UK introduced VAT.

The early Seven Series 1 used the same 1,172 cc Ford side-valve engine as the standard Mark VI, here with 27 kW (36 bhp), and weighed about 500 kg. More than 2,500 original Sevens were sold. In 1973 Lotus sold the rights to Caterham Cars, which still builds its version, the Caterham 7.

Legacy

The Mark VI established the ideas that defined Lotus for decades: a light frame, simple and cheap mechanical parts and good handling instead of brute power. Its successor, the Seven, has been described as "the embodiment of the Lotus philosophy of performance through low weight and simplicity" — a philosophy that began with the Mark VI. Later Lotus cars such as the Elise follow the same principle.