Lotus 56: the incredible turbine car that nearly won the Indy 500

I had a good look over it, and sat in it. Somebody even fired it up one day. There were no electronics, it was all mechanical. I don’t know quite what the procedure was to get the turbine going, but I think you had to heat it up and there was some sort of starter. It was just like lighting a big blowlamp.

I liked its simplicity. Although it was four-wheel drive with a turbine, when I looked at it I thought, ‘It doesn’t look massively complicated’. And I always think that’s a good thing, when a design looks simple enough that you could just sit there and do it in five minutes. It gave me that impression.

It was quite a clean car, with a very pronounced wedge shape and a chopped-off tail. Without the radiators and all the rest, it was very tidy. It must have been reasonably good aerodynamically. The suspension was good because the uprights and wishbones were the same all round, although obviously only the front wheels steered. It was all neatly done.

Like the four-wheel drive system, the turbine engine didn’t look overly complicated. You’d expect pipes and wires everywhere, but it wasn’t like that at all. When you stripped the gubbins off the turbine engine, it was just this little device. It was very well executed.

For a race like Indy, turbine power was perfect: you could produce a lot of horsepower in a relatively compact package; it was better suited to an oval, where you have a lap of fairly constant speeds; it was all fairly progressive and repetitive. I think it was pretty efficient fuel-wise, too, and probably made the most of the pitstop strategy.

Looking at the spec sheet, the engine weight of 2601bs was producing 500bhp when running on gasoline. I guess it was a pretty good power-to-weight ratio in those days. It didn’t really have a gearbox – it basically just powered to the wheels. I think that’s what was so wonderful about it, and made it a lot simpler inside. The weight distribution of 43:57 was pretty much the same as today.

Ultimately, it didn’t win the Indy 500, although Leonard was leading when it retired a few laps from the end, just like with the Paxton turbine the previous year, coincidentally. It did a few races after Indy that year, but turbines were banned by USAC for 1969. Open-wheel racing has always been done the US way, which is not at all interested in technicalities. It’s interested in drivers running wheel-to-wheel, and doesn’t really care how that happens.

So I think probably it got banned because the crew-cut good ol’ boys over there were scared witless that they would have to build something like that themselves. When compared with some of the cars running at the time, the 56 must have looked like it came from Planet Zog! It must have terrified them when this fantastic wedge shape arrived with its hissing, whistling engine.

Lotus briefly raced an F1 version in 1971. I think what you’d do today is couple it to a very fancy transmission, a CVT of some sort, whereby the speed variation is done more in the gearbox than in the engine. The engine would run at its optimum power or torque, and you’d be driving the car effectively on this variable-speed transmission.

It’s interesting that so many have chosen Lotuses in this series. Chapman was always looking for that new way. There were a few times when he fell on his arse and got lots of criticism, but he liked being an innovator. Whether he was the one who came up with the fundamental ideas I don’t know, but he was the one who made them happen. That’s why so many of his cars are on this list.

But to be fair, I think a lot of the modern designers have purposely not chosen cars from the last 15 years or so because they didn’t feel comfortable acknowledging their opposition!

John Barnard was talking to Adam Cooper