The Lotus 49 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. The shape is credited to Colin Chapman / / Maurice Philippe.
How it came about
The Lotus 49 was a Formula One racing car designed by Colin Chapman and Maurice Philippe for the 1967 F1 season. It was one of the first F1 cars to use a stressed member engine combined with a monocoque to reduce weight, after BRM, with other teams adopting the concept after its success.
An iteration of it, the 49B, adopted, after Ferrari, the use of strutted aerofoils to generate downforce. Jim Clark won on the car's debut, in 1967, and it would also provide him with the last win of his career, in 1968. Graham Hill went on to win that year's title and the car continued winning races until 1970.
The hardware
the output is 420-440 hp @ 9,000-10,000 rpm. On the scales it comes to 501 kg. That is roughly 838 horsepower per tonne: hypercar territory, where the limiting factor is the tyre, not the engine. The wheelbase is 2413 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Lotus line-up the Lotus 49 has a clear place: it replaced the Lotus 43; it handed the line to the Lotus 63 / Lotus 72. Its Lotus stablemates include the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 101.