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“Colin Chapman is my hero”

12. Nov 2021 
by Ziv Knoll
2624 views

Gordon Murray, the South African-born designer of Formula One racing cars and the McLaren F1 road car, tells his admiration of Colin Chapman.

There was nothing else on the planet that was comparable to a Lotus. Colin Chapman is my hero. In my early days in Formula One, I was considered as ‘the child’. Ken Tyrrell and the others told me ‘welcome to the circus’, but Colin Chapman kept his distance, followed by ‘I am Colin Chapman’. Not much, but more than enough.”

But in 1974, when we came first and second at Watkins Glen with the Brabhams, Colin came up to me and said, “this is how it’s done”, and went away.”

Picture above: Colin Chapman and Gordon Murray discuss something in the paddock, with Bernie Ecclestone not missing a thing.

A short time later, Murray goes on, photographer David Phipps a good friend of Colin’s, came up to me and said, “I have been commissioned to offer you a job by Mr. Chapman.” “I would get a car, my retainer tripled, a house in Norfolk, private plane: everything. But the timing was wrong. We already had the BT44…”

From that moment until his death (in 1982), not a year went by when he didn’t try to hire me. In 1976 and 77 I thought about it. But Bob Dance from the racing team came up to me and told me we looked too much alike and it probably couldn’t work.”

We can only imagine what these two engineering geniuses would have achieved together at Lotus. Or maybe not. The history as it is, is good enough.

Picture below: Gordon Murray and Carlos Reutemann in 1975, happy days at Brabham.

Source: DR

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