In this respect, Lotus trumped even Lamborghini’s Miura and De Tomaso’s Mangusta.Lotus founder Colin Chapman had long wanted to market a car like this, and he saw his opportunity in the unlikely shape of the Renault 16. At 0.29, its drag co-efficient made it the most aerodynamic production car in the world. Most people thought its appearance, like a delivery van compressed by a steamroller, was a bit way-out but suspected there must be a good scientific reason. And they were right: the Europa was the first GT road car with a mid-mounted engine, bringing this configuration – pioneered by Coopers and Lotuses in the late 1950s and early ’60s – to men-about-town for the first time. He was a racing driver and this was a racing car for the road.At just 42in high, the ground-hugging Europa was but 2in taller than the Le Mans-winning Ford GT40, making it something of a motorised daybed to drive. “I suspect that if you were foolish enough to open the passenger door in the daily traffic jam, you would immediately break the world record for the greatest number of dolly birds ever packed into a Lotus Europa.”Well, it was the early 1970s and Mr Dron, a tall, handsome man, was doing nothing more than, quite probably, saying it like it was.

Even five years after the Europa was unveiled, it was still a crowd-stopper. I can do no better than quote Tony Dron, eminent racing driver and motoring pundit, writing in 1971 after having driven to work in one along London’s Cromwell Road: “There is only one car that wakes them all up with a start, that pulls such obviously inviting stares one begins to feel conspicuous” he said of the sultry secretaries waiting in the bus queues en route. But you only have to list (and picture) a few of the Europa’s fusty contemporaries – the Morris Minor, the Austin-Healey 3000, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Vauxhall Victor – to get the idea It was a Sandie Shaw in a room-full of Alma Cogans. it was…
As you can probably tell, I wasn’t there at the time Or, at least, being a year old, not really. My index finger aches through pressing the delete key, because trying to be cute about it doesn’t really work The Europa was, quite simply, the car of the moment It was groovy, it was hip, it wasn’t for squares.. it was… I’ve rewritten this introduction time and again in vain attempts to describe the impact the Lotus Europa made in 1966.

Also included are insightful portraits of the leading drivers, like Phil Hill, Willy Mairesse, England¿s Mike Parkes, Ludovico Scarfiotti, and John Surtees, who between them achieved so much for the marque’s owner, the tyrannical Enzo Ferrari.There are interviews with Surtees, former technical director, Mauro Forghieri, and Lancashire’s Brian Redman, and much more in this comprehensively-researched book, which contains 200 monochrome photographs, and 32 pages of colour shots; many of which have never before been published At £35 Scarlet Passion is hardly an inexpensive buy But no student of motor racing can afford to be without it.. Pritchard witnessed many of Ferrari¿s great triumphs at first hand and tells a compelling story. Six successive wins at Le Mans from eight attempts, the World Championships, the battles with Porsche and the might of the American GT40 Fords are all covered in detail. This was in the golden epoch of sports prototype and sports racing cars when, from 1962-1973, victories in the prestigious long-distance races were recorded by Ferrari as prolifically as Schumacher gathers Formula One points nowadays.
In Scarlet Passion, Anthony Pritchard traces the development of the 246SP, 250GTO, 250LM through to the 330P4 and thence to the glorious 312PB prototypes and their successors the fabulous 512S and 512M Group Five sports cars.