48 replies to this topic

[zango]

I was shopping around for a car yesterday when I stumbled upon a 1961 Lotus 18/21 for sale at a local car dealer: http://www.parkplace...ils.asp?id=1188. Cool car and I am actually going to stop by today and check it out (never seen a classic GP car in person).

My question is about the name of the car. Why 18/21? Anyone know the reason behind having two numbers in the name? Anyone have any cool stories to tell about this car?

On a slightly amusing note, I missed one of the zero's in the price of the car and started wondering why it was so cheap. I even contemplated buying it until this morning when I finally saw the third zero.

[dretceterini]

This car was built as a Lotus 18 (formula junior), and over the years, "upgraded" to a type 21 GP car. This is typical of what was happening in the early 1960s. Cooper also did the same type "upgrading"..

[Roger Clark]

Doug Nye "Theme Lotus":

918: Climax FPF 4-cyl - UDT Laystall Racing Team 1961 - converted to 18/21 - loaned to Walker team 1962 - Jock Russell 1963 fitted 4.7-litre Ford V8 renamed Russell Ford - buned-out in garage fire 1967, remains scrapped 1976.

The tail of the car pictured does not look like an 18/21.

I don't think it started life as a Junior.

[Torgny Arvidsson]

If this is the "real" chassis #918 you refer to, it was the winning car in the first formula 1 race I ever saw - Kanonloppet in Karlskoga 1961. Three Swedes taking part in the race, JoBo and Ulf Norinder in Porsche 718/2 F1 and CG Hammarlund in another Lotus 18/21.
Torgny

[Ray Bell]

While I understand how the naming came about, I've always wondered just what constituted a Lotus 18/21...

For instance, was the rear suspension upgraded to get rid of that driveshaft/top link arrangement?

And were mods required to the chassis to fit the slimmer nose cone?

IIRC, the Junior and F1 chassis in the 18s were different (in dimensions)... isn't that right?

[Doug Nye]

Lotus 18/21s ranged in spec according to the owner's ambitions and budget. Basically we adopted that classification for what had been originally the coffin-bodied 1960 Type 18s uprated to wear Lotus 21-type more sleek and curvaceous body panels and with the rear suspension converted to feature lateral top link location of taller hub carriers, while the half-shafts were given plunge capability so they could alter their length as they moved through the arc between bump and rebound, unlike the Type 18 half-shaft which was fixed-length and doubled-up as the hub carrier's top lateral locator. All clear??? Nice to hear of another Phoenix rising from the ashes...by the way.... ....oh dearie me...

DCN

[oldtimer]

Coffin-bodied 18s , eh. And who dared call them that in ear-shot of Chunkie?

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Doug Nye
Lotus 18/21s ranged in spec according to the owner's ambitions and budget. Basically we adopted that classification for what had been originally the coffin-bodied 1960 Type 18s uprated to wear Lotus 21-type more sleek and curvaceous body panels and with the rear suspension converted to feature lateral top link location of taller hub carriers, while the half-shafts were given plunge capability so they could alter their length as they moved through the arc between bump and rebound, unlike the Type 18 half-shaft which was fixed-length and doubled-up as the hub carrier's top lateral locator. All clear??? .....

Yeah, I'm pretty much Orx Fate with all that suspension jiggery pokery stuff, Doug. So if that wasn't a part of the upgrade it wasn't so termed then?

Seems a bit of a waste of time to just put prettier bodywork on it... and what about the height of the chassis at the front, did that get in the way of the nose?

Also, you say 'uprated'... but were they uprated by Lotus or privately? I would guess both, and I know BRP have been mentioned.

[zango]

Thanks a bunch for all that information!

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by Doug Nye
Nice to hear of another Phoenix rising from the ashes...by the way.... ....oh dearie me...
DCN

I remember Alan Baillie telling me at the time he was working on this car that although the plate said 918, he believed it was really 916
Trouble is, another 916 has since appeared in historic racing.....

[Peter Morley]

I used to have this car. Alan Baillie restored it for me, it is 918 the ex-Jock Russell car.
It should be noted that several of Jock's cars caught fire and were scrapped when they were no longer competitive! Despite that most of them survive (e.g. don't believe all you read).

Alan also worked on 916, which passed through the trade for some time before then - it is the car that came back from the States with a ZF gearbox and subsequently was restored with a Colotti. I think this was the car that was left behind by Team Lotus after the US GP - and consequently it should have a different chassis number (which the Lotus 18 with ZF gearbox presumably has).

He never thought that 918 was 916 - he thought that 916 was 916 & 918 was 918, is this how rumours get started?

Alan has since then also restored another 18/21 - I can't think of the number off the top of my head but it was painted black (or some very dark colour) originally.

Alan himself has 915 which despite having an aluminium 18/21 style body fitted, when it was on the roof at Donington, was a very original 18 underneath.

Basically there were two types of 18/21

First were 18s that were converted to 18/21 spec - this involved modifying the corners of the bulkheads, and adding the top link for the rear suspension and fitting the 21 style body.

Then there were 18/21s that were built as such from the start (all by Parnell I believe), that was the case with 918 for example.

The engine cover on 918 does look like an 18/21 one since it is an 18/21 engine cover, Alan took moulds from the original body and they are what are used on all the 18/21s that are running.

All the 18/21 bodywork was made by UDT Laystall, when Team Lotus ran 18/21s they even used UDT bodywork, as did Rob Walker's one.

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by Peter Morley
Alan Baillie....never thought that 918 was 916 - he thought that 916 was 916 & 918 was 918, is this how rumours get started?

You'd better ask Alan. That's what he told me - I didn't make it up

[Peter Morley]

Originally posted by David McKinney

You'd better ask Alan. That's what he told me - I didn't make it up

It was sometime ago and Alan is getting on!

Perhaps he has forgotten, but he certainly knew which car was which at the time.
916 was the pale green car that was crashed in a historic race and straightened by Alan.
918 was the dark green car he finished the restoration of, that had been identitifed as such by the previous owner.

He worked on another 18/21 as well as the Tony Shelley car - owned by someone fairly close to where he lives, this was a converted 18 (so I think it has a 3xx type chassis number) rather than a Parnell built 18/21.

That makes at least 4 18/21s that Alan has worked on - certainly enough that he might be forgiven for getting confused over which was which (even if the owners never were).

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by Peter Morley

Then there were 18/21s that were built as such from the start (all by Parnell I believe), that was the case with 918 for example.

The engine cover on 918 does look like an 18/21 one since it is an 18/21 engine cover, Alan took moulds from the original body and they are what are used on all the 18/21s that are running.

Does the first sentance mean that 918 was built by Parnell?

All the 18/21s that I remember racing in 1961 had an 18-style engine cover. In particular they had a much larger hole at the extreme rear than hte car pictured.

[Peter Morley]

Sorry, 918 was built by UDT-Laystall, I think the Parnell cars were known as P1 & P2 - they were probably all built by the same person but not sure who that was (Tony Robinson?).

All the original photos of 918 showed it with the 21 type of engine cover with the big carburettor bulge.

Possibly some converted 18's had to have an even bigger (squarer) engine cover, but all the ones I've seen had this type.

In fact the body is huge - when I stood on the seat to get in the car the top of the screen was getting very intimate! The 18/21 is like a 5/4 size 21, but you really don't see that until they are side by side.

The rear hole in the engine cover might have been larger to accomodate some other gearboxes (some early Colottis were very big) - we had to rebuild the rear of the engine cover before a mould could be made, since it had been cut to take the huge ZF 5 DS 25 gearbox that Jock Russell fitted with a big V8 engine. But I think cars with small boxes - Queerbox, ZF, Laystall or small Colottis, would have kept the small opening, like it now has.

[Ray Bell]

So the answer to the question 'was the chassis modified to take the sleeker nose' is actually "no, the body was made larger"?

When you mention modifying the corners of the bulkheads, Peter, do you just mean the rear ones where changes were made to accommodate a top link? Or were there other changes?

[Peter Morley]

These chassis haves 4 bulkheads.
Pedal, instrument panel, seat & rear.
The instrument & rear ones are typical Lotus, perforated with holes.
On an 18 they are more or less square, on a 21 they are oval.

On the 18/21 they rounded off the corners of the perforated bulkheads (e.g. pedal one was left alone), to make them a bit smaller, making them as small as a 21 was not possible - the main chassis tubes are much further apart on an 18 than a 21.

At the rear a couple of lugs were added to take the top link - this is the same as when a 20 junior is modified into a 20/22, and is attached to the top chassis tube rather than the bulkhead.

It is also possible the seat bulkhead has another mount for the upper radius rod added since this might be higher than on an 18 (can't remember this - maybe that is just on juniors).

So the chassis is slightly modified (not very nicely on updated 18 chassis, where it was a cut & shut job on the bulkheads, on cars built as 18/21s the bulkheads were purpose made, so much neater) and the body is a larger version of the 21 body made specially for the 18/21.

The body is so big it is possible the frontal area of the car is no better than an 18 (it is certainly wider than the flat sided 18), but it is clearly more streamlined, neither of which probably have a great affect on the cars performance. I suspect the top link rear suspension was the only significant advantage and even that has limited value, the main advantage was the cars looked much more 'modern'.

[Ray Bell]

So the only change to the chassis to make it possible to fit a sleeker body was the rounding off of the instrument panel bulkhead...

Thanks Peter, and I'm sure you're right that the trailing arm mount would have been changed.

[Peter Morley]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
So the only change to the chassis to make it possible to fit a sleeker body was the rounding off of the instrument panel bulkhead...

And the same to the rear bulkhead.

[Roger Clark]

The rear of all the contemporary 18/21 pictures I have seen looked like this, which is Moss at the Nurburgring:



In fact it is possible that all the pictures of the back of 18/21s I have seen are of Moss. This looks like an 18 to me and not like the car in the advert.

However, I recently found this picture of te start of the Silver City Trophy race at Brands Hatch.



This was the first race of the 18/21s, driven by Moss and Bonnier. The individual cars are not identified but the car on the inside of the second batch as we look at them could be Bonnier. In fact, I can't think what else it coud be.

While on the subject of the UDT-Laystall cars, can anyone tell me what gearboxes they used at this race? At Monaco they used a gearbox built by Laystall. THey did not go to Zandvoort, and at Spa only appeared briefly before the accident which finished Cliff Allison's career. At Reims, Motor Sport reported that the Laystall's had been abandoned and they had Lotus gearboxes. So which gearbox did Moss use to win at Brands Hatch?

[Peter Morley]

Hard to tell which shape the Moss one is from that distance - could be like the UDT one but with a large cutout for the Colotti they used - it looks more rounded at the top of the cutout than the 18 covers at the back of the grid in Brands.

The 2 pale cars at the back of the grid at Brands are normal 18s, the pale car in front of them looks like an 18/21 rather than a 21?

These would all be easy to find if I had a copy of the GP record book to hand (can dig it out tomorrow)!

The Laystall box apparently had something to do with Hewland (pre-decessor of the HD4 & HD5).

Normally UDT used Colottis when they didn't use the Laystall box, but they also had some Lotus Queerboxes - presumably from their 18s.

[Roger Clark]

The 2 pale cars at the back of the grid at Brands are normal 18s, the pale car in front of them looks like an 18/21 rather than a 21?

THat's the car I was referring to.

These would all be easy to find if I had a copy of the GP record book to hand (can dig it out tomorrow)!

If you mean the formula 1 REcord Book by John Thompson, it says they have Laystall gearboxes. I hadn't thought to look there. I wonder how reliable their information is and what their source was.

Why did UDT-Laystall abandon their own gearbox if it was good enough for Moss to win at Brands Hatch? The Lotus gearbox they used later was not a paragon of reliability.

[Peter Morley]

That's the book I meant.
I think most of the info. comes from the same source as that in the Sheldon & Rabagliatti black books - apparently they only included information that was recorded in person, so it should be pretty accurate (at least as far as chassis numbers, but possibly less so about the specifications).

The idea of anyone reverting to a Queerbox is pretty strange!
The Laystall gearbox case was round which is an odd shape for a gearbox so it might not have worked very well either!

Rob Walker tended to use Colottis because they were better than the Lotus boxes, maybe the Queerbox worked better in some situations (presumably a race with a very limited number of gearchanges), or the decent boxes were being rebuilt?

Being a true anorak I think it would be interesting to see a book on the history of the rear engined racing gearbox!

[Allen Brown]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
... If you mean the formula 1 REcord Book by John Thompson, it says they have Laystall gearboxes. I hadn't thought to look there. I wonder how reliable their information is and what their source was.

Thompson's book is excellent - the F1 Register were incredibly meticulous in those days. The pity is that when the Black Books caught up to the same period they actually managed to introduce errors by correcting things like the LDS and the Cooper T53 "VR".

Allen

[Roger Clark]

Were 917 and 918 built by BRP or were they Lotus-built and modified by BRP to 18/21 specification? I always thought the latter, but it seems this was not so.

And did the Walker car (912?) receive the same cassis modifications when modified to 18/21 spec?

[Peter Morley]

Yes 917 & 918 were built by UDT (later known as BRP).
Presumably they had permission (& possibly tooling) from Lotus hence they carried on the numbering sequence.
They were always 18/21s not modified 18s.

Walker car would have had similar modifications - the bodywork was from UDT, but fitted by themselves - but carried them out themselves, so the execution would be slightly different.

UDT & Rob Walker were obviously close (Moss's Father presumably being the connection) since they often swapped cars - Moss driving 918 in Sweden for example and the car he crashed at Goodwood in was in UDT colours rather than Walker's.

[Roger Clark]

A further question about the 18/21s has occurred to me, and this thread seems the most appropriate place to ask it. The Lotus 18 was noted for its large scuttle mounted fuel tank. On the 21 this was replaced by pannier tanks. Wsa the same thing done on the 18s converted to 18/21 specification? Pictures of the Walker and UDT cars with bodywork fitted suggests that they were.

If so, the modification, and the consequent lowering of the centre of gravity must have been one of the most significant improvements.

[D-Type]

What was what at Monza?

Ireland swapped cars with Moss after practice. If I remember rightly, they swapped chassis but each kept his own top half of the body. There may have been some repainting.

So Moss had a Lotus 21 chassis with a BRG 21 bottom half and a Walker blue 18/21 top half. And Ireland had a Lotus 18/21chassis with a Walker blue 18/21 bottom half and a BRG 21 top half. Presumably engine covers matched the top half.

Is this anywhere near right? Or am I justifying my signature again?

[Roger Clark]

I can't remember having seen a picture of Ireland's Monza car, but Moss' clearly had 21 top bodywork, painted in Walker colours.

[xkssFrankOpalka]

I raced both the 18 and 20 Junior. The 18 was fun to drivewith the bigger wheels, more than the 20. I then found a type 21. It was converted to mud racing and had a Corvair transaxle and no engine. Now the mighty fall. The front suspension was a rocker type with inboard shocks. Might have been a Mecom car which slipped down the ranks. Did not know the serial #. I think it was originally was using a Climax V engine. It had all the tanks and body work but it was too big a project for me. I hear there is a F1 vintage owners group and I guess thats where it is now.

[D-Type]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
I can't remember having seen a picture of Ireland's Monza car, but Moss' clearly had 21 top bodywork, painted in Walker colours.

Wolf has sent me a photo which I won't post for copyright reasons (a convenuient excuse as I don't know how!).

This confirms the above. It shows Moss's car with BRG bottom half and a Walker blue top. The fit is good so it must be a 21 top.

So, why did they only repaint half the car? As a believer in simple answers being the most probable, I would guess that the top was re-painted while mechanics were race preparing the car and when they had finished there was no time to paint the bottom panels and for the paint to dry.

[Don Capps]

What is a "18/21"? There were Type 18s and there were Type 21s and there were Type 18s which were updated to near-Type 21 specs or with new body panels similar to that of the 21s, but I am unaware of anything called a Type "18/21" -- or did I sleep through that part of the lecture?

[D-Type]

Don, this is what Doug wrote in post 6

Originally posted by Doug Nye
Lotus 18/21s ranged in spec according to the owner's ambitions and budget. Basically we adopted that classification for what had been originally the coffin-bodied 1960 Type 18s uprated to wear Lotus 21-type more sleek and curvaceous body panels and with the rear suspension converted to feature lateral top link location of taller hub carriers, while the half-shafts were given plunge capability so they could alter their length as they moved through the arc between bump and rebound, unlike the Type 18 half-shaft which was fixed-length and doubled-up as the hub carrier's top lateral locator. All clear??? Nice to hear of another Phoenix rising from the ashes...by the way.... ....oh dearie me...

DCN

And then in post 11 Peter Morley added

Basically there were two types of 18/21

First were 18s that were converted to 18/21 spec - this involved modifying the corners of the bulkheads, and adding the top link for the rear suspension and fitting the 21 style body.

Then there were 18/21s that were built as such from the start (all by Parnell I believe), that was the case with 918 for example.

The engine cover on 918 does look like an 18/21 one since it is an 18/21 engine cover, Alan took moulds from the original body and they are what are used on all the 18/21s that are running.

All the 18/21 bodywork was made by UDT Laystall, when Team Lotus ran 18/21s they even used UDT bodywork, as did Rob Walker's one.

Not an official designation but a convenient shorthand.

Does anybody know whether the purpose-built cars had Lotus 18 series chassis plates?

[Roger Clark]

When did Team Lotus run an 18/21?

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by D-Type
Does anybody know whether the purpose-built cars had Lotus 18 series chassis plates?

Official plates I suspect not - certainly not chassis numbers numbers in the official Lotus numbering sequence. The Parnell cars have always been known as P1 and P2, but whether or not that is an official designation I do not know.

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by Roger Clark
When did Team Lotus run an 18/21?

Possibly in Intercontinental races in 1961?

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by David McKinney

Possibly in Intercontinental races in 1961?

I don't think so.

[Ruairidh]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Roger Clark
When did Team Lotus run an 18/21?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As touched on above - the 1961 Italian GP.

DCN & Grant-Braham both have Innes in a Team entered 18/21 in the 1961 Italian GP. Chassis 912.

Grant-Braham has the story that Innes' intended car had been "destroyed in the Nurburgring fire and as Moss had a chance of taking the championship for Lotus he was chivalrously offered the newer Team Lotus 21 as a replacement. In effect the drivers swapped steeds..."

[Macca]

posted by Ruairidh:

Grant-Braham has the story that Innes' intended car had been "destroyed in the Nurburgring fire and as Moss had a chance of taking the championship for Lotus he was chivalrously offered the newer Team Lotus 21 as a replacement. In effect the drivers swapped steeds..."

IIRC Innes' 21 was burnt-out at the 'Ring, leaving just the steel-tube chassis, which everyone, including Innes, thought would be scrapped.................but Chunky said to the mechanics "Rebuild it - but don't tell Innes".....................which might indicate that even at that point in the season ACBC had his driver choices for 1962 worked-out.

(Although I've read somewhere else that somebody thought the chassis would have been nicely stress-relieved by its 'heat treatment'.)

Regarding the 18's scuttle tank, I'm sure that must have been replaced by panniers in the 18/21 conversions - unfortunately all the 18/21s I've seen have run with a small modern tank in historic racing.

This car is interesting:
http://www.southseam.../sprint0291.jpg

It is or was owned by John Oakley from Basingstoke and has been a regular in HSCC meetings for some years. I haven't seen him for a while, but he told me it is an ex-Team car and pointed out that in the cockpit are redundant brackets for two other gear-lever positions besides the Hewland it now has, indicating that at various times it carried a queerbox and a ZF. I looked at the chassis plate but couldn't make sense of it in relation to the numbering system in DCN's book - anybody know anything about it?

Since the 21 made its debut at Monaco, presumably Team ran either 18s or 18/21s in the early season F1 races in 1961 - so when did the 18/21 first break cover?

Paul M.

[Don Capps]

Since the 21 made its debut at Monaco, presumably Team ran either 18s or 18/21s in the early season F1 races in 1961 - so when did the 18/21 first break cover?

This might help with an answer to that question: http://www.atlasf1.c...ger/mirror.html

[Macca]

Thanks for that, Don - so it seems Team ran only standard 18s in the early 1961 races before Monaco. Does anybody have the chassis numbers used for those races, which might give a connection to this car?


Paul M

[Don Capps]

I think '371' was among them.

[KJJ]

Can't find my copy of Theme Lotus but Stefan Örnerdal's excellent site confirms that Team Lotus used chassis nos 371, 372 and 374 in the pre-Monaco 1961 races.

[Macca]

Thanks KJJ, I'd forgotten that one and hadn't looked at it for a while.

It appears to show that Lotus 18s c/n 917 & 918 were used by both Rob Walker and UDT, as well as RRCW's 906 & 912 and UDT's 915 & 916 used exclusively.



Paul M

[Macca]

Did the 900-series chassis numbers and the 370-series chassis numbers (plus the Parnell-built 'P' cars) encompass all the 18s that were built for F1 and F2 in 1960-61?

What was the chassis number series for the FJ cars? Was there a difference between the number series of the 'Team' cars as used by Clark/Taylor and the production cars that were presumably made by Arch Motors?


Paul M

[Peter Morley]

Originally posted by Macca
Did the 900-series chassis numbers and the 370-series chassis numbers (plus the Parnell-built 'P' cars) encompass all the 18s that were built for F1 and F2 in 1960-61?

What was the chassis number series for the FJ cars? Was there a difference between the number series of the 'Team' cars as used by Clark/Taylor and the production cars that were presumably made by Arch Motors?


Paul M

I think it goes thus:

The number part of the chassis numbers is sequential.
e.g. 370 is the 370th Lotus, 900 the 900th.

Early cars just had a number - e.g. 96 could be a Mark 10 and 97 a Mark 6.

Around 1960 they started to prefix this number with the model type.
e.g. 20 - J - 951 was a Lotus 20, Formula Junior and the 951st Lotus.

Since they tended to build cars in batches a lot of models would have sequential numbers, but there could be some jumps in the sequence (hence 18's jumping from 370 to 900 - presumably a lot of numbers were allocated to other (road?) cars in the midst of this).

Later they introduced a different method, numbering each model type seperately - e.g. 49s go from R1 to R13 (49 - R1)

And of course when JPS became less acceptable on TV the cars became JPS-1 etc

Parnell used their own nos. e.g. P1 etc, but UDT continued the Lotus sequence - presumably with some help from Lotus otherwise they could easily have duplicated nos.

[David McKinney]

Pretty sure the answer to your first question is "yes"
The FJ 18s started at 701 and went into the 800s - total production was allegedly 125, but I've seen higher numbers than 825 ;)

[Allen Brown]

Originally posted by Peter Morley
...Later they introduced a different method, numbering each model type seperately - e.g. 49s go from R1 to R13 (49 - R1)...

So what did the 'R' stand for?

[Peter Morley]

Originally posted by Allen Brown
So what did the 'R' stand for?

Racing or Race?

To avoid confusion with Road cars!!!!!