28 Facts About Lola Cars

1.

Lola Cars was founded by Eric Broadley in Bromley, England, before moving to new premises in Slough, Buckinghamshire and finally Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and endured for more than fifty years to become one of the oldest and largest manufacturers of racing cars in the world.

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2.

Lola Cars started by building small front-engined sports cars, and branched out into Formula Junior cars before diversifying into a wider range of sporting vehicles.

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3.

Lola Cars was a brand of the Lola Group, which combined former rowing boat manufacturer Lola Aylings and Lola Composites, that specialized in carbon fibre production.

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4.

In 2005, Lola Cars announced that a new batch of T70 coupes, to the original specifications, would be released.

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5.

Lola Cars took over the Multimatic franchise in Grand-Am's Daytona Prototype category in 2007.

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6.

In 1967, Lola Cars assisted Honda Racing and John Surtees with the design of their F1 car.

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7.

The resultant Honda RA300 was called the "Lola T130" by Lola Cars, unofficially called the "Hondola" by the press, and was sufficiently light and powerful to win the 1967 Italian Grand Prix.

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8.

Lola Cars used the team's factory to build the ill-fated Alfa Romeo "ProCar".

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9.

Lola Cars had originally intended to enter Formula One in their own right in 1998, but pressure from main sponsor MasterCard caused Lola Cars to debut its new car one year early, in 1997.

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10.

Lola Cars had a lot of problems, the worst being aerodynamics – they had never even been tested in a wind-tunnel when they arrived in Australia, which by that point in time was unthinkable.

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11.

Lola Cars was saved through the purchase and cash rescue package from Martin Birrane.

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12.

On 22 April 2009, Lola Cars announced on its website that "Lola Cars Group has commenced a major project comprising a full technical, operational and financial evaluation aimed at developing a car to compete in the FIA Formula One World Championship".

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13.

Lola Cars was one of several teams to lodge an entry with the FIA for the 2010 Formula One World Championship.

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14.

The final Lola Cars F2 was derived from a Ralt design – the Ralt RT2 became the Toleman TG280, which Toleman licensed to Lola Cars who productionised it as the T850.

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15.

When Formula Two was replaced by Formula 3000 in 1985, Lola Cars made a "false start" with a car based on their significantly larger Indycar chassis; from 1986 they returned with a bespoke F3000 design.

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16.

Lola Cars enjoyed significant success for the next few years, competing with Ralt and Reynard, although Reynard effectively wiped the others out of the market.

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17.

Lola Cars has been supplying the car body since 1985, the first year of F3000.

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18.

Mauro Martini on Lola Cars won the title, and Toshio Suzuki of Lola Cars won second place in the series ranking.

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19.

Lola Cars won pole positions in Rounds 7 and 8 when the finals were canceled due to heavy fog, but he never recorded a victory.

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20.

Kazuyoshi Hoshino, who drives Lola Cars, became the third champion, but Hoshino used the previous year's machine, which has abundant data and is highly reliable.

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21.

The International F3000 ended in 2004, but at the Euroseries 3000 Championship, which uses the old chassis, the Lola Cars chassis was used consistently until the end of the 2009 series.

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22.

Lola Cars made a seamless switch into this kind of "sports car racing", and won five consecutive Can-Am championships.

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23.

Once again, Lola Cars showed its ability to succeed in all motorsports outside of Formula One, pushing March down to one team for the 1990 CART season, and out of the series altogether by 1991.

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24.

Six years after its full-time entrance into Indycar racing, Lola Cars triumphed at Indy again, as the winning car for Arie Luyendyk in the 1990 Indianapolis 500.

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25.

Lola Cars produced the spec chassis for the CART Indy Lights developmental series that was used from 1993 to 2001, replacing the previous car that was essentially a modified March 85B Formula 3000 car.

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26.

In Formula 3, Lola Cars partnered with Dome of Japan to produce a chassis in 2003.

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27.

The partnership was broken in 2005, with Lola Cars building their own chassis which won its debut race in the British series, but the Dallara near-monopoly held.

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28.

Lola Cars built chassis for a wide range of minor categories over the years.

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