The Lotus 27 is a Open wheel from Lotus, built from 1963, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 1098 cc Cosworth Mk.XI.
The story
The Lotus 27 was a Formula Junior version of the Lotus 25 Formula One car for the 1963 Formula Junior season. Its body was aluminium monocoque with steel bulkheads. It was originally designed with fibreglass sides which led to flexing problems, leading to them being replaced with aluminium. The Team Lotus cars were run by Ron Harris; and Peter Arundell won the 1963 British championship after the initial flexing problems were solved.
What is underneath
Power comes from 1098 cc Cosworth Mk.XI. It shifts through a 5-speed manual Hewland transmission. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Lotus 22. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Maserati Quattroporte, the Buick Riviera, the Pontiac GTO — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Lotus catalogue sit the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 101.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Lotus 27 has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.