The Lotus 101 is one of the Lotus entries the open record knows by name, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable. Its designer of record is Frank Dernie (Technical Director) / Mike Coughlan (Chief Designer) / Tim Feast (Chief Engineer).
How it came about
The Lotus 101 was the car with which the Lotus team competed in the 1989 Formula One World Championship. It was powered by a Judd V8 engine and driven by triple World Champion Nelson Piquet and Satoru Nakajima, in their second and third seasons with the team respectively.
The hardware
it is rated at 600-610 hp @ 11,200 rpm. Kerb weight is 500 kg. Power-to-weight lands near 1200 horsepower per tonne, which is hypercar territory, where the limiting factor is the tyre, not the engine. The wheelbase is 2900 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Where it sits in Lotus's history is not in doubt: the 100T came before it; the 102 followed it. Its Lotus stablemates include the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 102.