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Car Of The Day: June 21, 2017; Matchbox '72 Lotus Europa
Topic Started: Jun 21 2017, 10:00 PM (204 Views)
Swifty
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The Mustang II is a Mustang too!
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Today's Car Of The Day comes from Brett's collection and is Matchbox's 1972 Lotus Europa.

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Wikipedia
 
The Lotus Europa name is used on two distinct mid-engined GT coupé cars built by Lotus Cars. The original Europa and its variants comprise the Lotus Types 46, 47, 54, 65 and 74, and were produced between 1966 and 1975.

The name was later revived in the Type 121 Europa S, a Lotus Elise-derived design produced from 2006 to 2010.

The Europa concept is believed to have originated during 1963 with drawings done by Ron Hickman, then director of Lotus Engineering, for Lotus' bid for the Ford GT40 racing car project. When that contract was lost to Lola Cars, Chapman chose to use Hickman's highly efficient aerodynamic design, which had a drag coefficient of only Cd 0.29, as the basis for a new mid-engined production model originally intended to succeed the Lotus 7.

By the mid-1960s, the mid-engine vehicle configuration was well-established as the optimal design for Grand Prix cars, however almost no road vehicles yet used this arrangement. Lotus planned the Europa to be a volume-produced, two-seater mid-engined sports coupe built to reasonable cost, quite an ambitious goal for the time. Like all Lotus vehicles of the era, the Europa was designed and built following Chapman's oft-stated philosophy of automotive design: "Simplify, then add lightness". To this end, a number of ingenius design approaches were made by Lotus to allow it to economically overcome the many challenges presented by the novel mid-engined arrangement.

Production of the original Lotus Europa ceased in 1975, with a total of 9,230 cars of all models having been built.

The Europa used a lightweight, folded & welded "minimalist" boxed-steel backbone chassis with a fibreglass moulded body, a combination that was first used by Lotus founder Colin Chapman in the Lotus Elan launched in 1962. Earliest versions of the Europa had the body fully-bonded to the chassis for maximum structural stiffness, however this was soon changed to a bolted-on body to allow normal chassis and body repairs to be made. Unlike the Elan, the Europa had no front-mounted engine or gearbox to accommodate, and so the Europa's main chassis member ran straight forward to intersect a large box-section cross-beam running across the car between the front suspension points. At the rear, the chassis split into a "Y" shape behind the cabin to accommodate the combined engine, transmission and final-drive components, and to support the rear suspension.

The sourcing of suitable engine, gearbox and final-drive components was considered critical to the success of delivering a low-cost mid-engined vehicle. Chapman was keen to diversify beyond the Ford components heavily used in earlier Lotus vehicles, and settled on using the engine and combined transmission/final-drive transaxle units recently released by Renault for their Renault 16. The 1470cc Renault engine was a light and modern design (if somewhat pedestrian in the Renault), while the matching Renault 16 transaxle seemed almost ideal for the Europa project. In the Renault vehicle, the transaxle sat ahead of the engine, driving the front wheels. By relocating the combined engine/transaxle unit to the rear of the car and rotating it 180 degrees in plan, Lotus could obtain a ready-made modern mid-engine configuration - albeit one with 4 reverse gears! By repositioning the differential crownwheel within the final drive assembly, the direction of rotation of the output shafts was reversed, thus correcting this "shortcoming".

The Renault 16's engine's design was well-suited to Lotus's requirements. It used an aluminium block with cast-iron cylinder liners, which saved appreciable weight compared to the cast-iron blocks more common at the time. It's overhead-valve design had the camshaft located high-up in the block, resulting in a compact valve-train well suited for high-rpm operation. Most importantly, all the engine ancillaries (water pump, belt-drives, alternator) were driven off a v-belt pulley fixed to the transaxle end of the camshaft instead of being driven by the engine's crankshaft. When fitted to the Europa, this pulley location put all the engine's ancillaries at its rear face giving easy access for maintenance, rather than them being located hard against the vehicle's bulkhead as-for most conventional engines.

For Lotus use the Renault engine was given a number of key improvements, including a higher compression ratio (10.25 instead of 8.6), larger inlet valves, revised valve timings, dual valve springs and a twin-barrel carburettor. These changes lifted the engine's power by 30% from 63 bhp @ 5000 rpm to 82 bhp @ 6000 rpm. For US export, a de-tuned 1565cc version was used giving 80 bhp @ 6000 rpm.

Later Europa models were fitted with the same Ford-based Lotus Twin Cam engine used in the Lotus Elan range since 1962. This was a sophisticated, twin-overhead-cam, 8-valve high-performance motor producing 105 bhp in original form (later lifted to 126 bhp in "big-valve" form), and it was reported that Lotus initially delayed its introduction in the Europa until they were confident in the strength of the Renault transaxle. The twin-cam engine first appeared in the Europa in 1971.

When Renault released their most powerful 16 TX model in 1973, it included a strengthened 5-speed transmission. Lotus quickly offered this gearbox as an option in the Europa, along with their Big Valve twin-cam engine.

The Europa's four-wheel independent suspension was also typical Chapman thinking. The front used lightweight pressed steel upper and lower wishbones with a clever coil-over spring-damper arrangement, all connected to the wheels using off-the-shelf front uprights, ball joints and trunnions. The steering gear was solid-mounted rack and pinion using Truimph Herald components.

The rear suspension was a heavily modified version of the Chapman strut, originally developed for Chapman's earlier Formula racing car designs and used in the Lotus Elan. In the Europa, the vertical "strut" element pivots on the wheel hub at its lower end and doesn't control wheel camber angle as-in earlier Lotus designs. Wheel location and alignment is controlled instead by interaction between a fixed-length, articulated driveshaft top link, a simple tubular lower link, and a large box-section radius arm running diagonally forward to the chassis. These radius arms played a critical role in giving the precise tracking and handling desired, as the Chapman Strut's use of the driveshaft to resist lateral forces was compromised by the rubber engine and transaxle mounts needed to isolate vibrations from the car body. A careful compromise between the radius arm mount's stiffness, isolation and car handling was required, culminating eventually in a sandwich bush that was flexible against shear but stiff in compression and tension. The car's subsequent resulting handling prompted automotive writers to describe the Europa as the nearest thing to a Formula car for the road.


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For more information and pictures of the real car, please visit: Lotus Europa

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A heritage model for Matchbox, they did it when the car was new in showrooms, and they did it again decades later. This is the newer casting, and it's a beauty.

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Wikipedia
 
The Europa Series 2, or Lotus Type 54, was introduced in April 1968 (approximately chassis number 0645 onwards). The S2 used the same 1470cc Renault engine and mechanical components as the earlier Series 1, but added a number of key refinements including opening electric windows, adjustable seats, a new fully carpeted interior and a polished wooden fascia panel for the dashboard. The most significant change was the switch from fully-bonded construction to the use of bolt fasteners to attach the fibreglass body to the backbone steel frame. While reducing the torsional and flexural stiffneses somewhat, the use of a separable body was welcomed by the automotive insurance industry as it greatly reduced the complexity and cost of making repairs to the vehicle.

Early examples of the S2 were externally almost identical to the S1 with the exception of the new windows. From early 1969, secondary front indicator lamp nacelles were added between the headlights, and larger door handles were used in place of the S1's push-button items. During 1968 a number of Europas (and Elans) were produced bearing black-and-silver Lotus badges on the nose and steering wheel in place of the customary yellow-and-green ones. The official Lotus Cars website states these "black-badge" vehicles were to commemorate the death earlier in 1968 of Jim Clark, Lotus's champion Formula One driver, however this is debated by other sources.

Contemporary road tests for the Europa S2 recorded a top speed around 120 mph (195 kph), 0-60 times of 9.3 secs, standing 1/4 mile times around 16.7 secs, and an overall fuel economy around 30 mpg (9.4 L/100 km).

A small number of Series 2 vehicles were modified to be "federalized" for export to the United States. These Federal Type 54s had the low front fenders (guards) of the European model and the larger 1565cc engine of the later Lotus Type 65. These cars were subsequently recalled by Lotus due to the headlamps being below the regulated US height (a "bug eye" headlamp raiser was later to be installed). In 1969-70, the Type 65 (also known as S2 Federal) was born specifically for export to the U.S., with additional changes to the body, chassis, suspension and the powerplant to better comply with U.S. D.O.T. standards. Among the changes, the engine was a slightly modified emission controlled Renault 16TL 1565 cc engine producing 80 hp rather than the 1470 cc engine of the Type 54. The front suspension was changed to make the front end of the car taller along with taller front fenders to raise the headlamps. Road & Track magazine tested the Federal S2 and recorded 0-60 mph in 9.6 seconds with a top speed of 116 mph (187 km/h).

In total Lotus produced 3,615 Europa S2s.


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Dean-o-mite
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Muscle Car
I appreciate that Matchbox made this one represent the S2, with the added indicator lights on the front, in contrast to the original Lesney casting, which was the older S1. I am a fan of small details like that.
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chris.p
Compact
The buttresses over the rear wings are different on the S1 and S2. The later S2, with the lower buttress, was Ford powered.

To minimise the purchase cost many Lotus's were sold as kit cars. Some came more or less in boxes for others you had to do little more than put the wheels on yourself. It was a tax dodge.

Nice choice.


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Pegers
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Pony Car
in pink it is a real eye catcher.
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juantoo3
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is no mistaking this standout Lotus design...nothing else looks even close.
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