Taken from Motor sport, April 1998

No story on Colin Chapman could omit the word ‘innovation’. But his remarkable talent lay not so much in inventing devices as solving problems, and, more crucially, in identifying that problem first. What set him apart was his ability to look at the whole picture, ignoring the constraints of accepted knowledge while looking for a way to reduce weight, drag or complexity. If nothing existed to suit, he was too practical to set it aside and wait for technology to catch up; he would dismantle the problem and find answers to each of its constituent parts.

Often the latest clever idea became blindingly obvious — but it took Chapman to see it first. Hugh Haskell, a Lotus engineer in the Sixties, relates in his book Colin Chapman — Lotus Engineering how Chapman would guide a junior through the needs and constraints of the current problem until his pupil reached the key to it. Then he’d say “you see, it designs itself!” and walk away.