Lotus Six: a dazzling debut

By Paul Hardiman

| 9 May 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Lotus Six: from circuit racer to trials car

Before the immortal Lotus Seven was the Six (or MkVI), a car that properly put Colin Chapman and Lotus on the map for producing intelligently designed, lightweight sports cars that could (initially, at least) be completed by enthusiasts at home.

The spaceframed racer, running parts sourced mainly from sidevalve, ‘perpendicular’ Fords, helped many a fledgling racer’s career in the lean years after WW2, before it was superseded by the Seven in 1957.

The reappearance of HEL 46 confirms that, right at the start of the nascent company’s move into production from its base in Hornsey, north London (albeit in tiny numbers, in sheds), it intended to cover more than circuit racing and speed hillclimbs.

The Lotus Six trials car (right) has huge wheel articulation

This ugly ducking is a trials Special, like the first Lotus: an Austin Seven-based car built in 1948, four years before Lotus Engineering Ltd was created.

Two more trials Specials followed before Lotus began to race and market the Six in 1953.

HEL 46 is among the first of the 100 or so Sixes built.

The Lotus Six road-racer is longer, wider and lower than its mud-plugging sibling

In our minds’ eye, drawing on ancient issues of Autosport and dusty reference books, Sixes are low, sleek and polished.

This one represents the exception, the usual boundaries of the silhouette and footprint distended, squeezed and extruded skyward to better do its job.

It sits high, both for ground clearance and weight transfer, and the feeling of sitting on top of it is accentuated by raised seats, carried on frames, rather than sitting on the floor as with most Sixes and Sevens.

HEL 46 pioneered the idea of a trials Lotus Six, riding tall and soft with a narrow body

It’s narrower and a foot shorter than a regular Six, which further messes with its proportions – and the logic going on in your head.

But does it work? Yes.

It won its first trial, a London Motor Club event held at Annecy, France, in June 1953, entered as a ‘Vicki’ (the owner had form for entering his cars under female names), and owner Martyn Halliday is still winning historic trials with it today.

Ford’s 1172cc sidevalve ‘four’ sits unusually high and far back in the trials Lotus Six (closest)

Climb gingerly over the side in a kayak-style entry and it leans over like a stagecoach on its tall springs, a most un-Lotus-like reaction.

As a mudplugger with limited power, it is by necessity incredibly low-geared, to the point that first is redundant on the road, but the famously huge gap in the ratios between second and top in the Ford three-speed ’box means that it will still bat along at 45mph or so.

Pull away in second and it’ll take top at walking pace.

The lofty Lotus Six runs on road tyres, as trials regulations stipulate

The tough sidevalve ‘four’ punches above its size, feeling more torquey than a lowly 1172cc should.

It is hung about with Aquaplane tuning bits and a spiky Newman cam with high lift but very short duration.

Estimated power is only a few numbers up on a standard E93A Prefect’s 33bhp, but it pulls smoothly from tickover.

Soft power delivery is what you want in a trials car, because they have to run road tyres and aren’t allowed limited-slip diffs.

This Lotus Six competes at the 1961 Land’s End Trial, crewed by Arthur and Madge Hay

The front brakes are twin-leading-shoe and surprisingly good, which comes as a shock following closely in its glamorous road-racer sibling, though you do most of your stopping with the handbrake, on rear drums.

The extra height just emphasises the shortness of the nose, which conveys excellent vision for threading around trees and other trials obstacles, with a fabulously tight steering lock – though at the straight-ahead it wanders, following contours in the roads and tacking with a ‘set’ to either side like a sailing dinghy.

This is a very specialised device, and it’s nicest with the ’screen folded flat to give yourself the best chance of plotting an approximate course.

This Lotus Six, driven by Arthur Hay, at the 1954 K&B Sporting Trial, with Bill Lawrence

This was the fourth (or maybe third, or even the second) in the first batch of five Sixes laid down for Lotus by the Progress Chassis Company, bodied by Williams & Pritchard and built up for Horace Sinclair-Sweeney in 1953 using parts from his existing Ford trials special, including its registration number, to the then new RAC National Trials Formula.

In its sales literature and advertisements, Lotus claimed the Six chassis weighed only 80lb and that: ‘Though this will be a little more stark than the sports-racing unit, it can use either normal, rigid or swing-axle suspension, as preferred. Price £110.’

The beam front axle and coil-over dampers required, as here, a separate Panhard rod for sideways location, which in the donor car would have been by transverse leaf spring.

The Lotus Six’s Aquaplane rev counter is one of its rare original parts

It also explains why this example doesn’t carry a chassis number: that would have been on the bracket added under the front to locate the two halves of a divided axle.

Because the engine sits higher and further back than in all the other Sixes, a bit of jiggery-pokery was needed to make room for the carbs’ air trumpets, resulting in the top-left chassis rail being cut and reshaped.

Sinclair-Sweeney sold it after a year of successful trialling and, following a decade’s ownership by Arthur Hay, it was retired when the rear axle broke in 1964.

The Lotus Six was the start of a lightweight dynasty

Its awards included two of the coveted Motor Cycling Club ‘Triples’, given for unpenalised performances in the long-distance Exeter, Land’s End and Edinburgh trials.

Ownership passed to Hay’s daughter before Martyn, founder of the Historic Sporting Trials Association (HSTA), managed to acquire the car in 2010 and set about resurrecting it.

Roach Manufacturing restored the body, keeping most of the original, which is pleasingly battered down the sides.

The Lotus Six trials car has a charming breather hose for the fuel cap

Only the bonnet is new, because the original was too mangled to use, but that piece now proudly hangs on Martyn’s garage wall.

It still has its original Ford E93A sidevalve engine and matching gearbox.

“Jeremy Bennett at Nemesis Racing in Tetbury, who builds historic Formula Three engines, did a brilliant job on the motor, including fixing two cracks in the block,” says Martyn, who also sorted the rear axle: “I already had a new-old-stock crownwheel and pinion from my Dellow trialling days back in the ’80s but, knowing the old Ford halfshafts are weak, I commissioned a fresh batch in a higher-quality material.”

HEL 46 is one of the earliest examples of the Lotus Six

Those tiny front brakes make its retardation capabilities all the more surprising, though this weighs less than an Austin Seven saloon.

The solid beam front axle adds lightness and simplicity, while the soft, tall suspension allows a huge degree of axle articulation front and rear, as Martyn demonstrates by happily driving it in and out of his pond, with no drama.

On the move, on uneven surfaces, you’re very aware of it all flexing away underneath you.

The Lotus Six’s front suspension uses Colin Chapman’s split-beam layout

In 2022, following the restoration, it was entered in the HSTA 10th Anniversary Heritage Sporting Trial (its first competition for 58 years) and won outright.

That was followed in April 2023 when it won the Vintage Sports-Car Club’s Diffey Brothers Wessex Trial.

“It’s currently the oldest Lotus competing, and winning, in motorsport,” says Martyn.

“Not bad for an original 70-year-old car crewed by my wife and I, who are both 80.”

The same spaceframe design caters for two very different Lotus Sixes, in both style and purpose

It really is a friendly old thing, with its soft ride, easy gearchange and sprung Bluemel’s wheel.

Jacks, air pumps and two spare wheels complete the trials ensemble.

The road-racer looks and feels rather more serious: longer, wider, lower, minimal, and with the purposeful, Bugatti Type 35-style stance associated with having a wider front track than rear, with a touch of positive camber.

You slide down into a cosy, cocooning cockpit behind a tiny aeroscreen, which can only keep some of the bugs out of your teeth, and an engine-turned aluminium dash.

The Elva inlet manifold upgrade on the Lotus Six road-racer gives a peaky 77bhp

This car packs a nice Smiths Chronometric rev counter, which will sweep more of its 8000rpm range, because of the Elva Engineering overhead inlet-valve conversion.

It puts out more than twice as much power as the trials car, a claimed 77bhp: “The snag is that it’s still 1172cc,” says Martyn.

“In period, some were sleeved down to get them into the 1100cc class.”

The Lotus Six trials car does without a rollbar

It fires instantly, with a harder-edged bite than the subdued trials car, and has a much lumpier tickover.

The clutch is heavy and short of travel, and the throttle is even shorter, so getting away demands positive commitment.

First gear is tall – and there’s still that chasm between second and top in the three-speed gearbox, even with the claim of close-ratio gears, so you need to have it buzzing before an upchange.

The Lotus Six trials car follows on from the marque’s Austin Seven-based special, built five years earlier

You sit just in front of the rear axle, so are never in doubt as to what it’s doing, and the front wheels are commendably patter-free, controlled by the posh, adjustable coil-over dampers that would no doubt have highly excited Chapman back in the day.

Given the fairly high state of tune, it feels surprisingly tractable, happy at 2000rpm around the lanes, but you can feel it trying to climb up on the cam at 3500.

Maximum revs will be about 6500 when it’s run in, says Martyn, but it is still a bit tight.

The gearchange, operating via a long, remote linkage, is stiff, but it’s okay if you’re firm and precise.

The Lotus Six road-racer (left) sits much lower than the tall trials car

Double-declutching helps (in this respect the trials car is much better), although downchanges can still be crunchy.

The large, standard Ford brakes have good bite and it’s easy to squeal the front Pirelli Cinturatos (especially when the trials car stops dead in front of you), though they’re grabby because the drums aren’t quite in perfect shape – one of the items on the short snagging list before it competes.

It looks every inch the 1950s racer in its polished finish, and Martyn runs it without the usual Six spats purely for preference.

The Lotus Six road car features an engine-turned dashboard and Smiths dials

This one has a chassis number – 60, first registered in 1955 – and it transpires that it was owned by John Whitmore in 1957 and ’58.

Contemporary results in a late-1958 issue of Motor Racing report of finishes at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Silverstone (twice, with a best result of second in a handicap race, when it was already being described as a Lotus-Elva), and at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting, after which Whitmore sold it that November.

He went on to become British Saloon Car Champion in 1961, in a Mini, and 1965 European Touring Car Champion with a Lotus Cortina.

‘Given the fairly high state of tune it’s surprisingly tractable, but you can feel it trying to climb up on the cam at 3500rpm’

By 1969 it was in Scotland, and in 1992 the car was in the hands of Don Shead, who had the frame and body restored by FJ Fairman of Bodmin, Cornwall.

Except the car wasn’t completed until 2000: then-owner Stewart Couch had the engine, with its rare Elva overhead inlet-valve head, rebuilt by Paul Fox.

With FIA papers, it raced with the Historic Sports Car Club in 2001.

Then, in 2002, it was sold into Belgium, used in the Paul Matty Hillclimb Championship between 2003-2020, before crossing the water again to Sweden.

Lotus’ first commercial success covers all bases

It fetched up at a Silverstone Auctions sale in 2021, after which it was also sent to Nemesis Racing for an engine rebuild – where Martyn saw and bought it: “I’d always wanted a Six that I could speed hillclimb and race.

“I’d just sold my historic F3 Chevron when this came up – it’s just a nice, original car with a bit of history.”

It’s testament to the versatility of Chapman’s design that his basic idea could dominate two very different branches of motorsport, and display such different characters, yet came out of the same stables in north London seven decades ago.

Perhaps the most ringing endorsement of the Six is that his lightweight spaceframe concept is still with us today in the Caterham Seven and its imitators.

Images: John Bradshaw

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