Beschreibung:

2-Liter DOHC Cosworth Inline 4-Cylinder Engine Mechanical Fuel Injection Est. 300bhp at 6,400rpm 5-Speed Manual Transaxle 4-Wheel Independent Suspension 4-Wheel Disc Brakes *Offered from the Judge DiLoreto Collection *Significant North American racing success in the 1970s with many victories *Raced in the hands of Warren Purdy, Tim Evans and Carl Thompson *Engine prepared by Bob Slate LOLA CARS From humble beginnings in 1958, when the prototype Mark 1 sports car emerged from a garage behind the Broadley family's tailoring shop in Bromley, Kent, Lola Cars quickly established a winning reputation and grew to become a major force in world motorsport. Lola's success in commercial racing car production was based firmly on design integrity and build quality, both evident from that very first sports car. Pitched into an arena dominated by Colin Chapman's Lotus 11s, the Lola Mk1 soon proved to be the car to beat. Eric Broadley, his cousin Graham and Rob Rushbrook, at whose garage premises the first customer production versions were made, were the architects of the early success, which continued with a front-engined single-seater, the Formula Junior Mk2. By 1962, Lola was in Formula 1, with the well-sponsored team running an evolution of the FJ frame powered by the 1,500cc Coventry-Climax FWMV V8 engine. John Surtees led the Bowmaker Finance-backed équipe, and a domestic F1 win in the 2000 Guineas race at Mallory Park presaged second places in the British and German GPs, which built towards the brilliant, multiple-world-champion motorcyclist finishing 4th in the 1962 Driver's World Championship, won by BRM's Graham Hill. Among Broadley's early projects was the Mk6 GT coupé, which laid the foundations for Ford's all-conquering GT40, but the former builder's ability to produce cars for a wide variety of formulae was only just beginning to bubble to the surface. In 1966, for instance, Lola Cars's stock rose in the USA when Graham Hill won the celebrated Indianapolis 500 in a T90 and Surtees the inaugural Can-Am championship in a T70 Spyder. The success of its T70 'Big Banger' notwithstanding, it was a return to small-bore sports racers that kicked off one of the most successful eras in the history of the company, which had moved to Slough before relocating to Huntingdon where the present Lola Cars International Company remains. While northern rival Chevron remained exclusively committed to closed spaceframe cars, Lola's weapon for 1970 shocked the Boltonians to the core. The neat aluminum monocoque T210 was an open barchetta with a smaller frontal area than the swoopy B16, the body of which was also produced by Specialised Mouldings. The T210 set new parameters of excellence in the fledgling European 2-Litre Sports Car Championship for Makes in 1970. With Swiss-based Swedish veteran Jo Bonnier, Lola's European agent, heading up the driving strength, it took all the might of Brian Redman to keep the 1,800cc Chevron (which had beaten Porsche 917s and T70s at some circuits) competitive in its second season. After the most exciting Group 6 confrontation in history, at the challenging Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Bonnier won the drivers' crown but Redman, by now in a hastily chopped-down B16 Spyder, did enough to earn Chevron manufacturers' honors. Austrian Helmut Marko won the Championship again in 1971 with the T210's T212 successor, helping Lola to the manufacturer's crown that year. The subsequent ultra-successful and extremely attractive T290 family of 2.0-litre sports cars (which evolved through T292, T294, T296 and T298 versions) kept Lola in the hunt in European championships and for class honors at Le Mans and in the USA. This T290 family of cars (and the closely related T280 series, powered by 3.0-litre Formula 1 Cosworth DFV V8 engines) are widely regarded as classics of production racing sports car design. THE MOTORCAR OFFERED Lola T290 chassis number HU27 offered here from the Judge DiLoreto collection was raced with great success a