Formula One drivers get paid pretty handsomely these
days – whether the money comes from the team for which they’re racing, or their
own sponsors. But that wasn’t always the case. In lieu of payment for his
services, Lotus founder Colin Chapman gave Jim Clark this Elite Super 95 back
in February of 1962.
A multitalented racer, Clark won the Formula One
world championship twice (in 1963 and 1965), he won the Indianapolis 500 in ’65
(after qualifying on pole there the previous year), and the Tasman series three
times – all for Lotus, and all before the age of 32, when he died in a Formula
Two crash at Hockenheim. That places him as one of the top-rated racing drivers
of all time. And this was the car he drove.
One of only 23 examples made, the Lotus Elite Super
95 featured a more powerful engine, servo-assisted brakes, and a bigger fuel
tank. Like Sir Stirling Moss’, Clark’s car also featured one of the first
sequential gearboxes, but the troublesome transmission is no longer fitted to
the car, which is coming up for auction.
The Elite is expected to sell for between £ 150,000
and £ 200,000 (about US$ 200-265k) when the gavel drops at Battersea in London on
September 5. So, if you’re keen to get a memento of one of the finest drivers
who ever lived, and drive the car that he did, that’ll be the place to be,
checkbook in hand.
