LOTUS V SPYDER

[nebogipfel]

Relative to contemporary thinking the design principles were brilliant - Forcing the execution into lotus economics is a different matter and more likley a source of the failures you note than design ( material spec, production capabilities etc.) . I think the spyder argument is at best, opinion -

I couldn't agree more. Everything about the Elan was sheer genius, including the backbone chassis. It was light years ahead of it's time and of the other sports cars of the day. It was and still is the best ever Lotus (IMO) and one of the greatest cars ever designed and built. I bought one in '74 and loved it and I own one today and love it.

I agree that economics was probably a factor in the chassis failures, but it may have resulted from efforts to keep the car as light as possible bearing in mind that Colin wanted the Elan to be a 'glass monocoque and the chassis was a compromise, albeit a good one.

Re Spyder frames being stronger, all I can offer is my opinion based on my experience ..... it's all I have. Some will agree, others will not. That is the way of such things.

[elancoupe]

It would be interesting to see a torsional stiffness comparison between a Spyder and a reinforced (TTR) chassis.

[mikealdren]

The late Graham Arnold used to maintain that Chapman took into account the stiffness of the chassis when designing the suspension and therefore a stiffer chassis would spoil the ride/handling i.e. chassis flex was a suspension component.

To an extent he was probably right as they designed the suspension around the chassis but I've not doubt that he would have preferred a stiffer chassis, He just might have made the suspension a little more compliant to compensate.

Mike

[nebogipfel]

The late Graham Arnold used to maintain that Chapman took into account the stiffness of the chassis when designing the suspension and therefore a stiffer chassis would spoil the ride/handling i.e. chassis flex was a suspension component.

To an extent he was probably right as they designed the suspension around the chassis but I've not doubt that he would have preferred a stiffer chassis, He just might have made the suspension a little more compliant to compensate.

Mike

Yes, I have heard that story, but it has never really appealed to me as something you would design into a road car destined to do many many miles and years of life on various road conditions.

How would you ever really predict the behaviour of the chassis? ....and certainly if mild steel flexes to any degree it will work harden and cracking and failure is almost inevitable.

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Guys,

please don't forget what G. A. was at Lotus; namely Sales Director.
In that Role he may have overheard technical discussions, but did he understand the content?
I think not.
As Chairman of Club Lotus he also appointed himself as "Technical Guru" & as many do, he very often quoted other peoples explanations & cures to technical queries.
If you've read a lot of his stuff you will be aware that he was well capable of talking a load of Bollox.
Ah yes, you've maybe guessed; not a "Hero" of mine.

But back on Subject IMHO the Spyder Tubular frame is in so many ways superior to the original Lotus frame.
The improved stiffness has already been mentioned, the Spyder design also reduces the number of areas that can collect Water & Debris, thus slowing down the corrosion rate.
The front Suspension is easier to fix due to the removable rather than welded in Studs & in the Engine Bay the Square tube construction provides more space for access to the Engine & its Ancillaries.
The same applies for the space around the Differential which makes working in this area also easier.

I've seen quotes in various Lotus Books, that the Lotus Frame was an incredibly cheap solution, bearing in mind the forerunner, the costly Monocoque Mk14 Elite & other earlier Lotus Cars that had "Space Frames".
Apart from that, the Elan was conceived as a profit maker for Lotus, a lesson learned from the Elite.
To me that all says, Cost saving a top priority.
That can also be ratified when considering that the original Elan concept was aimed to compete with the inexpensive Austin Healey Sprite (Frog / Bug Eye).

Someone drifted off Topic & brought the 26R Frames into the discussion, somewhat irrelevant but OK the modifications compared to the standard Lotus Frame does make them stiffer but most importantly they remain "Race Legal".
Being "Race Legal" does however mean that they have to conform largely with the original design & therefore the "Rust traps" remain & Component access is still restricted.

Another technical point to be considered is the much discussed accuracy of any of these Frames.
It should be born in mind that the Frames are quite large fabricated structures, joined together by Welds.
Even though they are manufactured in "Jigs", the welding process does cause distortion & produce inaccuracies in the assembled product.
Hot dipping in molten Zink will also cause distortion.
The final accuracy is dependent on the inspection & correction of these faults prior to dispatch to the Customer.
Ask the supplier about conformity to drawing Tolerances of his product prior to ordering!

For my Money, the Spyder tubular frame wins hands down in every respect in comparison to the designed(?) & built to a budget Lotus Frame.
That's why the rusted out Lotus Frame in my S4 was thrown out & replaced with the well thought out Spyder Design.

Well that puts my post count up to 2000
Not a bad "Innings"
John

[andyelan]

Hi everyone

Isn't any discussion about relative stiffness meaningless unless weight is included in the equation. For a car designer (especially one like Chapman) it would be stiffness/weight that mattered.

Also for any commercial operation cost would have to be included in the equation too. I personally don't agree with the notion that Colin Chapman was always skimping on quality to save money. The real fact is that he had a tiny 1600cc sports car, which I don't believe he was making huge profits on, and it cost almost twice the price of equivelent competition namely the MGB. One would have to be asking at this point just how much more would the market would have stood.

Finally on the subject of longevity, my Plus 2 is still on its original chassis and, although it's now getting due for replacemet, it's over 35 years old. To my mind therefore, if the designers did make a mistake it's because they made the chassis too good. I would suggest that the chassis (and in fact the whole car) has actually lated a good 20 years longer than it needed too from a purely commercial point of view. Lucky for me.

Andy

[nebogipfel]

.........The real fact is that he had a tiny 1600cc sports car, which I don't believe he was making huge profits on, and it cost almost twice the price of equivelent competition namely the MGB. ........
Andy

It was my perception at the time that the Elan wasn't really trying to compete with the likes of MGB, Spridget and Spifire, they were very much everyday sportcars and a Lotus was upmarket and something you aspired to own if only you had a bit more disposable income

[andyelan]

Hi nebogipfel

I do sort of agree with your comments, but we're looking at this from our own perspective and we already know that Lotus we're producing somthing very special indeed with the Elan. The point I'm making is did the general buying public appreciate that.

I'm alway reminded of my other favorite car the Toyota 2000GT (the one from the James Bond film You Only Live Twice). That too was somthing very special and although basically an Elan clone, it was built with a money no object attitude. Problem was, in spite of superb engineering and build quality, it cost almost as much as an Aston Martin DB so in the end Toyota only sold around 300 of them.

Andy

[cabc26b]

Finally on the subject of longevity, my Plus 2 is still on its original chassis and, although it's now getting due for replacement, it's over 35 years old. To my mind therefore, if the designers did make a mistake it's because they made the chassis too good

To be fair , lets compare the rust tolerance ( longevity) of our cars to say any 60's vintage Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Jaguar etc. OMG , a 356 Porsche will rust in a desert ! but you never hear the bathtub guys lambasting ferry over his lousy design skills , nor do you hear them lauding the fiberglass copies with type 4 vw motors as being the way to go.

3 out of my last 3 pre 65 elans have/had the original chassis on them - maybe we need to factor in environment/usage .....

On the point of stiffness, how much do you need to make the elan work with the tires typically found on them ? The type 79 F1 was less stiff than spyder's claims ( BTW, who did the testing ? was it done side by side with a stock frame and by an independent lab ? ) also GA had it backwards - CC was heading to stiff frames and compliant suspension.

G

PS I still think the use case for the spyder unit is unclear or only addressable for small population of users.

[andyelan]

Hi Again Everyone

It always occurs to me that the discussion relating to Lotus vs Spyder chassis has as much to do with history as it does with the technical. So here's my take on the subject.

Back in the early eighties Elans, Europas etc (and many other cars now regarded as "classics")were just old cars of no value at all. Lotus had very little interest in them and in fact were actively distancing themselves from them since kit cars and grubby fingernails did not really fit their new upmarket image of the Elite, Eclat and Esprit. As a result many important spares, especially the likes of chassis and cylinder heads, became unavailable.

Luckily for us, up stepped enthusiast Vic Moore who set up Spyder and started repairs and remanufacture of chassis to the original design and filled the gap. What a hero.

All was fine and good therefore until, as the eighties progressed and the classic car movement took off big time, Lotus (like many other major manufacturers) realised there was a good deal of money to be made from classic car spares and they were missing out on the action, so they re-introduced the old elan chassis and also put the squeeze on Spyder to stop them selling the copies of them. As a counter therefore, Vic Moore designed a new alternative chassis, the spaceframe, which he could sell alongside the OE Lotus chassis with no problems. But, which were customers going to buy?? This now became a marketing exercise for Spyder which they did brilliantly by pointing out all the "faults" with the original design and demonstrating how their products were so much better and by getting the support of Club Lotus.

Which was really the best? Well, in my opinion the original chassis might well have been designed with a view to keeping costs down but it was also designed with the singlemindedness that comes from a racing car manufacturer. Here function is at the top of the list as it wraps around the mechanicals as tightly as possible with the minimum wasted space and if that means it is going to be difficult to work on or to get various parts in and out, then so be it. The Spyder chassis on the other hand is a much more practical and user friendly design and hence it's much more easy to live with, however, it is I believe very slightly more compromised functionally.

Which would I choose? Well personally I would always go for the original Lotus design simply because it is the original, but, to be honst, I think there's really very little between them. What I am aware of however is that it was independents like Spyder and others like them that fill a gap when manufactures had no interest and by doing so, helped save many cars which would otherwise have been lost. So perhaps the best outcome of all this is that we now have two alternative designs, from two alturnative manufacturers, from which to choose and because of this, it's us the customers who are the real winners.

Andy

[Gray]

Hi

I didn't realise mentioning torsional rigidity would cause such a response.

I think it is a matter of personal choice, Graham Arnold even approved Spyder chassis as an alternative to Lotus, you could not get chassis from Lotus on many occasions from the 70s on.

I can't belive the standard Elan chassis was designed to be flexible - on a Morgan maybe.

Haveing thrown away many Lotus chassis that have rusted or been bent, I chose a Spyder spaceframe chassis for my current S4. Much better made and stronger with a lot of the problems eliminated. I totally understand those who want to keep as original as possible and choose Lotus, I've known those who had distorted galvanised chassis regret it though.

Regards Gray

[billwill]

.........The real fact is that he had a tiny 1600cc sports car, which I don't believe he was making huge profits on, and it cost almost twice the price of equivelent competition namely the MGB. ........
Andy

It was my perception at the time that the Elan wasn't really trying to compete with the likes of MGB, Spridget and Spifire, they were very much everyday sportcars and a Lotus was upmarket and something you aspired to own if only you had a bit more disposable income

I agree, when I bought mine in 1969, I never even considered the MGB, Spridget or Spitfire, my shortlist was either a Lotus Elan or a Jaguar E-type.

[nebogipfel]

Luckily for us, up stepped enthusiast Vic Moore who set up Spyder and started repairs and remanufacture of chassis to the original design and filled the gap. What a hero.

Hello again Andy, Yes I'm certain we basically sing from the same hymn sheet. We are both Elan enthusiasts after all

Re your comment above, that is certainly perfectly true. The first Spyder frame I ever saw was when I fitted one to an Elan as the only chassis which was available at the time.

[mikealdren]

you've maybe guessed; not a "Hero" of mine.

John,
I agree entirely. He loved to quote Chapman and pontificate.

The Elan was certainly well engineered as we all know but and the suspension was well sorted but times have moved on and if Lotus were building it now it would be different. Computer modelling was not available to CABC and he had far less choice of components.

The question for us is how far we bring our cars up to date, if at all. We're lucky to have the choice and cars that are excellent in original or modern form.

Mike

[mikealdren]

you've maybe guessed; not a "Hero" of mine.

John,
I agree entirely. He loved to quote Chapman and pontificate.

The Elan was certainly well engineered as we all know but and the suspension was well sorted but times have moved on and if Lotus were building it now it would be different. Computer modelling was not available to CABC and he had far less choice of components.

The question for us is how far we bring our cars up to date, if at all. We're lucky to have the choice and cars that are excellent in original or modern form.

Mike