Historic Lotus Register

We can announce that CPOP 2015 along with the Historic Lotus Register will host the first ever gathering and parade of every production Lotus type manufactured.

The Historic Lotus Register (HLR) was founded in 1974 following a conversation between two Historic Lotus owners on the whereabouts of a certain part for a Lotus Eleven. They decided on forming a Register for future use for owners of period, historic Lotus cars.  Since then HLR has grown into an International Club of some 600 members catering mostly for the earlier Lotus models, of which there are several on display today. Of course the most popular Lotus Elan is now well over 50 years old and the HLR caters for those later models as well.

Each model has a Registrar with expert knowledge of that particular Lotus car.

The founder of Lotus cars, Colin Chapman, built his first Austin Seven based Special just three years after the end of WW2.  It was registered as a Lotus Mark 1 in 1948.  This was a mud-plugging trials car and Chapman and his car were very successful. In June 1950 Chapman entered and improved Mark 2 Lotus for a race at Silverstone, which he won.  This was the start of a momentous career in both road and racing Lotus cars.  By this time, Chapman had met the Allen Brothers, who became an important and integral part of the early

Lotus success story.  In January 1952,  the Lotus Engineering Company was officially formed. Chapman had now given up his day job and on to the Lotus payroll came a stream of talented engineers and designers, Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin (later Cosworth Engineering), Graham Hill as driver/mechanic, Williams and Pritchard for aluminium bodywork.  All these people contributed to the success of Lotus cars, both on track and road.

The success of Lotus cars on the track is well known, with five World Championships and three Construction Titles to their name.

The theme of this dedicated Lotus Day is an exhibition of road cars produced by Lotus. As you can see some of the cars were bought for the road and quickly became week-end racers, some were bought to race and with a second life on the road at the end of a racing from the display, the later Lotus road models were purchased mostly for the fun and excitement that these cars can bring, due to the Lotus  mantra 'lightweight and precise handling that can out perform much more expensive, high performance, prestige cars'.

 Despite the ups and downs of Lotus history, the cars have carried on providing fun and enjoyment as can be seen from the more recent models on display today.