The Lotus 39 was a single-seat

racing car Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...

produced by

Team Lotus Team Lotus was the motorsport sister company of English sports car manufacturer Lotus Cars. The team ran cars in many motorsport categories including Formula One, Formula Two, Formula Ford, Formula Junior, IndyCar, and sports car racing. More ...

. It was originally intended for use in

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

, to be powered by the

Coventry Climax Coventry Climax was a British forklift truck, fire pump, racing, and other specialty engine manufacturer. History Pre WW1 The company was started in 1903 as Lee Stroyer, but two years later, following the departure of Stroyer, it was relocat ...

1.5 litre flat-16 engine. The engine project fell through and the chassis was modified to accept a Climax 2.5 litre engine for the 1966 Tasman Series, in which

Jim Clark James Clark Jr. OBE (4 March 1936 – 7 April 1968) was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965. A versatile driver, he competed in sports cars, touring cars and in the Indianapol ...

finished in third place.

Design concept

were developing a flat-16 engine, the FWMW, as a way of increasing the power from a 1.5 litre engine. To accommodate this engine,

Lotus 33 The Lotus 33 was a Formula One car designed by Colin Chapman and Len Terry and built by Team Lotus. A development of the successful Lotus 25, in the hands of Jim Clark it won five World Championship Grands Prix in 1965, taking Clark to his ...

chassis R12 was modified by cutting off the engine pontoons behind the cockpit, as the FWMW was intended to be mounted in a tubular space frame. This project was allocated type number 39. Unfortunately, the FWMW was plagued with development problems and, with a new 3-litre limit for F1 announced for 1966, development was halted, as were plans for a 3-litre version. The 39 was then modified by then-new Lotus employee

Maurice Philippe Maurice Philippe (30 April 1932 – 5 June 1989), also known as Maurice Phillippe, was a British aircraft and Formula One car designer. Philippe designed his first car in 1955, called the MPS (Maurice Philippe Special), while employed developin ...

, who adapted the tubular space frame to take a 2.5 litre Climax FPF for

to race in the 1966 Tasman Series.

Racing history

In the 1966 Tasman Series, the modified car with its elderly engine was unreliable and uncompetitive against the

BRM British Racing Motors (BRM) was a British Formula One motor racing team. Founded in 1945 and based in the market town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, it participated from 1951 to 1977, competing in 197 grands prix and winning seventeen. BRM wo ...

s of

Jackie Stewart Sir John Young Stewart (born 11 June 1939), known as Jackie Stewart, is a British former Formula One racing driver from Scotland. Nicknamed the "Flying Scot", he competed in Formula One between 1965 and 1973, winning three World Drivers' Cha ...

and

Graham Hill Norman Graham Hill (15 February 1929 – 29 November 1975) was a British racing driver and team owner, who was the Formula One World Champion twice, winning in and as well as being runner up on three occasions (1963, 1964 and 1965). Despite ...

, and Clark's best result was a single win at the Warwick Farm International. Clark eventually finished third in the series behind Stewart and Hill. The car was then purchased by

Leo Geoghegan Leo Geoghegan (16 May 1936 - 2 March 2015) was an Australian former racing driver. He was the elder of two sons of former New South Wales car dealer Tom Geoghegan, both of whom become dominant names in Australian motor racing in the 1960s. Whi ...

who raced it in Australia and New Zealand from 1966 to 1970, replacing the Climax engine with a

Repco Repco is an Australian automotive engineering/retailer company. Its name is an abbreviation of Replacement Parts Company and was for many years known for reconditioning engines and for specialized manufacturing, for which they gained a high ...

V8 in 1967. Geoghegan also used it in Repco-powered form to win the 1969 JAF Grand Prix at the

Fuji Speedway is a motorsport race track standing in the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Oyama, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It was built in the early 1960s. In the 1980s, Fuji Speedway was used for the FIA World Sportscar Championship and nati ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The car was then sold to Brian Power who put a 1.5 litre Ford engine in the car. It was later rescued and restored to Climax specification by John Dawson-Damer. In 2008 it was included in the sell-off of Dawson-Damer's Lotus collection.

References

39 Tasman Series cars {{Motorsport-stub