Background

The Lotus Type 14 Elite was a light weight two-seater coupé produced from 1957 to 1963. 

It was quickly dubbed “The Race Car for the Road”

The Elite’s most distinctive feature was its highly innovative fibreglass monocoque construction and the resultant body was lighter, stiffer, and provided better driver protection in the event of a crash. The light weight allowed the Elite to achieve sports car like performance from a modest 75 hp 1,216 cc Coventry Climax FWE all-aluminium Inline-four engine Advanced aerodynamics contributed to the car’s low drag coefficient of Cd=0.29 

The original Elite drawings were by Peter Kirwan-Taylor. Frank Costin (brother of Mike, one of the co-founders of Cosworth), at that time Chief Aerodynamic Engineer for the de Havilland Aircraft Company, contributed to the final design. When production ended in 1963, 1,030 cars had been built, of which about 85% have survived.

Our Car

Our Lotus Elite was discovered in a wrecked condition, saved by Malcolm Ricketts from the scrap yard and moved to Ricketts Racing over 20 years ago.

The car was taken-on and completely rebuilt and beautifully restored to competition specification by Steve Millward for himself and his wife Jane to use competing in their beloved hillclimbs.   Steve painted the car in its now familiar yellow colour with a green racing stripe.

At this time the registration was 00 8507, but the subsequent (very short-term) owner retained the number and the car (now NSL 408) went to Steve and Joey Beale.

Joey was an accomplished race driver, having been part of a famous all-girl all-star race team with her sister Jacquie Bond-Smith, (known as the FLIRTs) racing internationally at the major European circuits in a Mini Marcos.  She and Steve enjoyed their Historic Racing together and Joey, being superstitious about car colours, changed the stripe from green to blue.

The Davison family acquired the car from the Beales in 2007 and it has been steadily developed over the years, losing its heavy wire wheels in favour of lightweight magnesium Lotus F3 items as raced by works cars in period, shedding many kilos of weight, and with a fully developed Coventry Climax engine and its ZF gearbox it has become one of the three fastest competition Elites in current competition.

It is nice to know that these delightful cars seem to adopt families, and we are proud to carry on this tradition with Barry racing NSL for some years, John having his first competition outing in the car, and subsequently doing very well in it, while Barry’s Brother-in-law Nick has a very similar blue and white Elite which he races alongside us”. There is nothing like keeping it in the family!