Rebuilding a once-great racing identify: The return of Lola Vehicles

The nose of a red Lola Mk1 in the foreground and a white and green Lola B12/60 in the background

Enlarge / A Lola Mk1 within the foreground and a Lola B12/60 from 2012 within the background. (credit score: Lola Vehicles)

Once I first heard of the plan to revive Lola Vehicles, I had some trepidation. In nowadays of SPAC-powered exuberance and blockchain hype, it might be fairly simple for a corporation to take the cynical strategy: Design (if not essentially ever construct) a ludicrously costly electrical hypercar and perhaps some NFTs and look ahead to the hype to roll in. Fortunately, these concepts could not be farther from the brand new proprietor’s plans.

“Merely put, our plan is to deliver Lola again to a former model of itself. To me, meaning being a design and engineering power in fashionable motorsport,” defined Until Bechtolsheimer, an investor and beginner racing driver who purchased the corporate’s belongings in June.

Older racing followers will know the Lola identify. The corporate was based within the UK in 1958 by Eric Broadley, and by 1962, it had entered Components 1 as a constructor, although by no means with a lot success. A pair of second-place finishes for John Surtees that 12 months have been one of the best outcomes Lola-built F1 vehicles might muster, and the corporate’s deliberate return to the game in 1997 with the backing of MasterCard was a whole fiasco that ended when neither of the corporate’s vehicles certified for that 12 months’s opening race in Australia.

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