Team Lotus Type 12 on display at the Lotus Store in Mayfair

Hazel Chapman would be the first person to try out the new Lotus Type 12. With mechanic and soon to be F1 driver Graham Hill watching the proceedings, Colin Chapman took this historic image of Hazel in the driver's seat of that first Lotus single-seater in the street outside the Lotus works in Hornsey, North London.

Shortly before it made a surprise appearance on the Lotus stand at the 1956 Earls Court Motor Show, alongside two new roadcars from Lotus (the Elite and the Seven), the prototype Lotus Type 12 had been revealed to the Press by a proud Colin Chapman in the gardens of the Railway Hotel, Hornsey.

Bristling with innovations, the first ever Lotus single-seater, the Type 12 was built on an extraordinarily lightweight spaceframe chassis made by the Progress Chassis Company using aircraft-specification Reynolds tube. A new suspension system was devised by Colin, called the ‘Chapman Strut’ (below) and, in order to keep un-sprung weight to a minimum, a new type of bolt-on (rather than knock-on) magnesium alloy disc wheel was used, the "Wobbly-Web."

It was preferable to keep the thickness of the alloy as thin as possible, yet it also needed to be strong, so primarily for strength an ingenious web pattern was devised that also created turbulence around the brake disc area, improving cooling.

In an especially bold move Chapman and his colleagues also devised a radical Lotus sequential gearbox which was very small, very light and minimised friction losses (above).

The Type 12 is also notable as the car first used by Team Lotus in a World Championship Grand Prix event. In May of 1958 Hazel, Colin and the Team Lotus crew trailered two cars to Monaco for the first Lotus Grand Prix appearance, where Cliff Allison and Graham Hill were entered. Hill retired but Allison finished a remarkable sixth and in just it's third GP, at Spa, the Type 12 scored the first World Championship points for Team Lotus with a fourth place finish at Spa.

This car on display in Mayfair is the prototype 12 chassis which has remained in the ownership of the Chapman family since 1957. It is all original (the outside of the bodywork and the wheels have been repainted). The chassis frame is the original paint – and corrosion – and even the tyres are the originals.

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