The Lola Mk1 is the first

sports racing car Sports car racing is a form of motorsport road racing which utilises sports cars that have two seats and enclosed wheels. They may be purpose-built prototypes or grand tourers based on road-going models. Broadly speaking, sports car racing is o ...

made by

Lola Lola may refer to: Places * Lolá, a or subdistrict of Panama * Lola Township, Cherokee County, Kansas, United States * Lola Prefecture, Guinea * Lola, Guinea, a town in Lola Prefecture * Lola Island, in the Solomon Islands People * Lola ...

, under the leadership and guidance of

Eric Broadley Eric Harrison Broadley MBE (22 September 1928 – 28 May 2017) was a British entrepreneur, engineer, and founder and chief designer of Lola Cars, the motor racing manufacturer and engineering company. He was arguably one of the most influentia ...

, in 1958. The body was designed and developed by chief stylist Maurice Gomm, made out of a steel or

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

tubular spaceframe chassis, covered in a low-profile, sleek,

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

skin. The , , Coventry Climax ''FWA''

four-cylinder engine The engine configuration describes the fundamental operating principles by which internal combustion engines are categorized. Piston engines are often categorized by their cylinder layout, valves and camshafts. Wankel engines are often categorize ...

was designed by Harry Mundy and

Walter Hassan Walter Thomas Frederick Hassan OBE, C.Eng., M.I. Mech.E. (25 April 1905 – 12 July 1996) was a distinguished UK automotive engineer who took part in the design and development of three very successful engines: Jaguar XK, Coventry Climax and Ja ...

. The car used a 4-speed

manual transmission A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission system, where gear change ...

, and was lightweight, only weighing in at a mere . It also notably won its class at the 1960 12 Hours of Sebring, being driven by Charles Vögele and Peter Ashdown. At least 32 cars were known to have been built, but the actual number is believed to be between 38 and 42.

References

{{Lola Sports Cars Mk1