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Remembering Roger Becker

The news of Roger Beckers retirement has brought out fond remembrances of his time at Lotus. One of these comes from our very own Barry Spencer who used to work in the Engineering department at Group Lotus. In his own words:

The very first week ( Nov 1980 ) I was in the US, I spent it at the SF auto show with Loose imported cars. That week I meet Miss San Francisco and we dated for two and a half years. The first time I went back to England after moving to the US was in 1982. I took Lisa with me and had an appointment to show her the Lotus factory. Roger gave us the complete tour and then he asked Lisa if she would like to go for a ride in a Lotus. Lisa sat in the front and I was in the back of an Excel. On the test track we go and all I could hear was Lisa screaming. A great ride with an awesome driver.

A big thanks to Barry for sharing this story with us. Rogers influence on Lotus will certainly be missed by the entire Lotus community but we do hope to still keep seeing him at various Lotus events.

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GGLC EVO School Registration is now open

Elise Autocross

Registration for the GGLC/BMWCCA joint EVO school on May 1 and 2 is now open. As someone who has taken the class before, I highly recommend them as one of the best ways to improve your skills and get better at autocrossing. The classes will be conducted in the Great America parking lot in Santa Clara and official class descriptions are below:

Phase I School

The “original” Evolution program as developed by the McKamey Autocross School. This first step in the Evolution is where all students start,regardless of experience. Daylong course builds upon students existing skills, while introducing new ideas to improve one’s times. Students both ride and drive with Evolution trained national caliber drivers to learn where they are fast and where they need to improve. Small student teacher ratio of 6:1 insures quality instruction time.

Combined with race proven skills, concepts, and techniques this course will improve the performance of all drivers on both road and track.Even experienced driver’s benefit from the Phase 1 course as a refresher for those things they’ve forgotten over the years or perhaps never learned.No matter what type of car you drive the Phase 1 skills will improve your overall driving abilities.

Note: All students must provide their own two-seat vehicle for the day. Two driver cars are welcome.

Phase II School

Building upon the skills learned in Phase 1, Phase 2 takes the driver into new areas of mental race preparation, allowing the Phase 1 skills to be applied as second nature. Various driving exercises are conducted throughout the day to improve the driver’s visual and mental imaging of the course, resulting in quicker lap times.

This course has worked “magic” in reinforcing the importance of Phase 1 skills and transferring those skills to every autocross course you may encounter. The Phase 2 track design is not the same as used in Phase 1 and generally has higher speed sections.Note: Phase 2 students must first have completed the Phase 1 Program. As in Phase 1, students must provide a two-seat vehicle for the day.

Use the following links to sign up for the course:
Day 1 (May 1, 2010): $275
Day 2 (May 2, 2010): $275
Day 1 & 2 (May 1-2, 2010): $500

For more information in the Evo School program please visit their website at www.evoschool.com

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Roger Becker announces his retirement from Group Lotus

Roger Becker, Lotus’ Director of Vehicle Engineering is retiring from Group Lotus after a long career of 44 years.

roger becker

Roger, 64, joined Lotus in 1966, working on the Elan assembly line at Cheshunt, but his natural driving and engineering skills came to the attention of Lotus founder Colin Chapman and Roger was quickly moved to the vehicle development team where he worked directly with Mike Kimberley (former Lotus CEO) on the Lotus Europa Twin Cam – his first Lotus car development project.

During his career at Lotus, Roger has been responsible for the development of every Lotus car, including the legendary Esprit, Excel, Elan, Elise, Exige and the new critically acclaimed Lotus Evora. Roger has helped to maintain the philosophies laid down by Colin Chapman and has ensured that the essence and purity of Lotus is instilled in all new Lotus cars. He also has imparted his chassis engineering knowledge and development skills to many of the world’s major automotive manufacturers in support of Lotus’ consultancy engineering business.

On his retirement, Roger Becker said, “I have had a dream career at Lotus, with the honour of not only working directly for Colin Chapman but also working with some of the finest people in the motor industry. With the Lotus Evora successfully entering the market with unprecedented global adulation, and at 64 years of age, I feel now is the natural time to retire. The Evora has given me my finest hour at Lotus and I leave knowing it will be the foundation of all our next generation cars. The product engineering team will build on this to develop many more award-winning products and I wish them every success for what promises to be a very exciting future for Lotus cars and the Lotus brand.”

Dany Bahar, CEO of Group Lotus plc said, “On behalf of all the staff at Lotus, I would like to thank Roger for his contribution to Lotus over 44 years and we wish him well in his retirement.”

[press release from Lotus]

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Heikki Kovalainen visits Lotus

Kovaleinen

F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen visits the home of Lotus Cars to meet the Lotus family and choose the scheme for his personalised Lotus Evora.

It was a real thrill for the Lotus workforce to see Lotus F1 Racing Driver Heikki as he was given a personal tour of the production facilities yesterday, and even more exciting for those few employees who got a rare chance to be driven by the F1 star as he tested the Lotus Evora on Lotus’ own test track for the first time.

During his day with Lotus Cars Heikki was given a special tour of the Classic Team Lotus workshops by Clive Chapman, son of Lotus founder Colin Chapman during which he chatted to Clive and Engineer Bob Dance about their first hand experience of some of the most successful and iconic F1 racing cars of all time. The tour was steeped in Lotus history and included some of the F1 cars that helped Lotus to achieve 79 GP wins, seven constructor’s titles and 6 drivers’ championships, including Emerson Fittipaldi’s Type 72.

Dany Bahar, CEO of Group Lotus plc said, “Group Lotus is very proud of its racing pedigree and we are all very excited to share our story with Heikki. It was our honour to welcome Heikki to Group Lotus and we wish him and the Lotus F1 Racing team every success for the 2010 F1 season.”

Dany Bahar continued, “We take great pride in the sports cars that we produce at Hethel and Heikki’s visit provided a great opportunity to show off the multi-award winning cars that we produce and the advanced niche production facilities at Hethel.”

Heikki was not on Lotus soil long before he was behind the wheel of the Lotus Evora trying it on for size on Lotus’ own test track and commented “The Evora was everything I expected, Lotus is famous for fantastic sports cars and the Evora did not disappoint. The power to weight ratio gives the car a real racecar feel and allowed me to really push the car round the track. I enjoyed every lap and had fun sliding it sideways!”

He went on to say, “The day has been great, I was really excited to see so many happy, motivated people and the support of the Lotus workforce is very much appreciated, I really got a sense of the passion the people have for the Lotus brand.”

Heikki concluded, “I’d really like to thank every one at Lotus for a great day, it was an honour to meet Clive Chapman and learn more abut his legendary father and to see Lotus’ classic F1 cars. I’m really keen to drive one of the JPS cars and maybe will be at Lotus again sometime soon to drive the Type 72!”

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Andreas Prillmann appointed as Chief Commercial Officer of Lotus Cars

Lotus continues to expand and strengthen its Senior Management team with a further appointment to announce Andreas Prillmann as Chief Commercial Officer responsible for Sales, Marketing and After-sales functions.

Andreas Prillmann

Andreas comes to Lotus from Ferrari where he held the position of Director of Business Development, a role that involved the reorganisation of the worldwide business model and dealer development.

Prior to Ferrari, Andreas enjoyed roles at Aston Martin, Porsche and General Motors. Specialising in the management of sales, after-sales, the dealer network, marketing and PR activities for both brands and products, he brings to Lotus a wealth of skill and experience.

Dany Bahar remarked on Andreas’ appointment, “Lotus extends a very warm welcome to Andreas, we are very fortunate to benefit from his tremendous industry experience. Andreas’ instinctive understanding of where we look to take the Lotus brand is very much aligned with my vision, and having worked with him in the past, I know the teams under his leadership can look forward with optimism and confidence.“

Commenting on this new role at Lotus, Andreas said, “It took me just ten minutes to accept the offer from Dany Bahar for the role of Chief Commercial Officer at Lotus. It was an easy decision to make as I see Lotus as a brand with so much potential and I am delighted to join this iconic company at such an exciting time and look forward to instigating the new strategic plans and initiatives that will take the Lotus brand to the next level.

[From Lotus]

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GGLC 2010 autocross season

Its time to start thinking about the 2010 autocross season! The Golden Gate Lotus Club will be hosting 7 events this year along with 2 schools. The dates are as follows (October TBD):

Saturday, April 10
Saturday, May 1 (Evo AutoX School)
Sunday, May 2 (Evo AutoX School)
Saturday, May 15
Saturday, June 5
Saturday, June 26 (Evo AutoX School)
Sunday, June 27 (Evo AutoX School)
Saturday, July 31
Sunday, Aug 8
Sunday, Sept 19

At least 5 of these dates will be points events for club members, April 10th will be a practice event. Note, a couple of these dates are Sundays.

We are going to change the classing and points system this year to give more drivers an opportunity to win. The idea is to have all drivers compete in one competition with 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes, and to use a pax-style system to account for car differences and modifications. More info will follow when the details have been decided.

The Evolution autox schools will be held jointly with the BMWCCA club. Phase 1 will be on the first day of the weekend and phase 2 will be on the second day. You must have completed phase 1 before you can take phase 2, so for most drivers (unless you have done phase 1 sometime previously) the option will be to sign up for either the first day or both days. The price will be $275 for a single day or $500 for both days. Registration is due to open on the evo site on Feb 1st. See the Evo School web site for more info. Note, sign-up for these schools will be restricted to just members of either the GGLC or the BMWCCA clubs.

Colm & Alex
GGLC Autocross Event Chairs

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Lotus Omnivore Engine interactive animation

Picture 1

While we have posted about the Lotus Omnivore engine before, all the existing information on it has been from dry technical press releases. Lotus Engineering has just released a new interactive animation that allows you to play with the various parameters of the engine and see how it alters itself to deal with various fuel mixes, loads, speeds, etc… My personal favorite is the Variable Combustion Ratio (VCR) that physically alters the volume of the combustion chamber.

Click here to play with the animation.

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GGLC Sunnyvale Lunch

Its time for another GGLC Sunnyvale lunch. This time we will be meeting at 11:30 am for Persian food at Chelokababi. Its a small restaurant in the Camino Wolf Center strip mall and has a small parking lot which should be pretty empty at that time. The lunch is open to all Lotus enthusiasts and you do NOT have to be a GGLC member to join us.

Please RSVP on this blog post or on the official British Speed thread (only one of the two please) by the 29th so I can make the necessary reservations.

When: 11:30 am on Feb 4, 2009 (Thursday)
Where:
Chelokababi Restaurant
1236 S Wolfe Rd
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 737-1222
www.chelokababi.com


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