Many Formula One fans will have no idea why this is such a big deal.
So here's the thing: Britain is the centre of excellence in Formula One. Teams based in other countries have, generally, been also rans. France, Italy, Germany and even Switzerland have tried but, with isolated exceptions, they have failed to produce the strength in depth that Britain, in particular England, has in Formula One.
Yes, the Germans excel in sports cars. But except for Ferrari, single-seat racing has been dominated by Britain.
It still is: for decades, the chassis used in US "open wheel" (as they like to call it) racing have been British. A1GP chose British cars and engines for their launch (since changed to Ferrari engines).
For a generation weaned on the obsession with Ferrari in red, the idea that any other team could elicit such passion is seemingly impossible. After all, McLaren and Williams are fantastic teams: yet they are viewed in an almost mechanical light.
The reason is this: Formula One is, for most teams, a technical race for excellence. Cars are built by geeks who calculate everything and all options. It is a scientific process.
That was never the Lotus way. Colin Chapman, who created Lotus out of his own desire to race and built his first car in a shed, was the last visionary in Formula One.
CAD software? Spreadsheets? Computers with floating point calculation? Nuts: Chapman had his brain, a few scraps of paper and a pencil. And every time you watch Formula One today, what you are seeing is the result of Chapman's designs. And when you step into your car, you are almost certainly driving a vehicle influenced by Colin Chapman's genius.
Lotus put the engine in the back of the car when everyone else had it in the front because Chapman had a hunch it was better that way. Chapman built light - sometimes fragile - cars because he knew that mass drains power and that top speed and acceleration is killed by weight. Chapman worked out that lighter cars generate less centrifugal force (this at a time when science was debating whether it existed at all) and therefore were easier to control in high-speed corners - which translated into higher speed.
When the whole world thought that aerodynamics was about creating a slippery shape, Chapman put wings on his cars, using aeroplane technology to produce downforce instead of lift. That added grip and the cars went around corners faster. Those front and rear spoilers on your car? Yep: you have them because Colin Chapman made it so.
Chapman worked out that the dirty air under a car created turbulence and that reduced downforce - and potentially dangerous lift. He created the Ground Effect that sucked the car onto the road. That almost flat floor under your car, with a rear diffuser? Yes, that's the son of Ground Effect.
Chapman created the monocoque chassis: if you drool over many high-end sports cars, you are drooling over a Chapman concept.
When you think of alternative fuels: Chapman built a gas turbine car for the Indycar series.
Lotus built the first carbon fibre car - but it was still in testing when McLaren's MP4/1 became the first carbon fibre car to race. Now this technology in composite materials has found its way back into aircraft.
Lotus (after Chapman's death) produced the first Turbo-powered Formula One car, designed by Frenchman G�rard Ducarouge who planted a Renault Turbo engine in the back of a chassis designed and built in just five weeks.
Four wheel drive? Of course, Land Rovers, etc. had it. But Chapman was first to put it into a performance car - and not just any performance car - a Formula One car.
When you dream of shooting rivers in a jet boat - Lotus exhibited one at the London Boat Show in the 1970s. So far ahead of its time, it never went into production.
Lotus was always short of money: from the early days the team survived on its wits. Chapman was the first to bring in sponsorship from tobacco companies - transferring the Red and Gold livery to a special edition road car, the Lotus Elan.
Chapman pioneered product placement: a Lotus Elan and a Lotus Europa were the androgynous cars for very unandrogynous sex symbol stars such as Diana Rigg in The Avengers.
He invented Active Suspension - yes, drive many mid- upper range cars today and you have something similar. But he died in a still-unexplained aircraft crash amid far-fetched conspiracy theories and allegations and never saw it implemented. When the team installed it, other teams cried "foul" and the FIA forced Lotus to take out the last great Chapman invention.
It was no surprise: the FIA had often changed the rules - calling it clarification - to either exclude or annul the benefit of Lotus innovation. Chapman vowed he would never race his cars again at Le Mans after a successful entry was excluded after the event because the rear wheels were larger than the front wheels - something the rules did not expressly preclude but which was said to be "outside the spirit of the regulations." Chapman's spirit lives on - and Lotus Engineering continues to innovate, from time to time putting the company in a precarious position - because what they are working on is right, even if the rest of the world doesn't know it yet.
Even after Chapman's death, the team continued to innovate: in the early 1990s, a secret programme had drive-by-wire working in a development chassis around the Hethel test track. That's what allows modern drivers to take the wheel off to get into and out of the car, an important safety feature.
After Chapman's death, the green and yellow Lotus badge on the racing cars was changed to black and silver in his honour.
Lotus found great drivers: Mario Andretti, the incomparable Ayrton Senna and, fatally, Jim Clark and Ronnie Peterson - the undisputed king in the rain. But the roll-call doesn't end there: Mika Hakkinen, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt - notice anything? Yes, all world champions. And the man who never won that title despite it being believed that he deserved it on more than one occasion, Stirling Moss. Away from the driver's seat, Sam Michael, Technical Director at Williams, was brought from Australia by Lotus just a year before its demise.
In its latter days, its finances precluded hiring top guns. It gave a drive to Johnny Herbert, struggling to get back into racing after a heavy accident caused serious injury. As the team struggled to raise money, Herbert made derogatory comments about the team and car.
The team was the most successful team in Formula One in the 1970s.
Team Lotus was the first team to win 50 Grands Prix. Ferrari, formed seven years before Lotus, were the second team to do so.
When Lotus went into administration in 1994, the name went with it and what was left was sold to David Hunt, brother of former F1 driver James. The team became Pacific Team Lotus but the Lotus name was quickly dropped. When the team went into liquidation in 1994, The team and engineering companies had been different entities since the early 1950s and therefore the car division remained in place.
There was, in June, news that Formula Three team Lightspeed had secured the rights to the Lotus Formula One name. But it was not on the list of names that the FIA approved for 2010.
And so here's the big deal: if you are not Italian, following Ferrari is, like someone who is not from (parts of ) Manchester following Manchester United, all about tribalism and fashion.
If you want real passion: there's Lotus.
And whilst there is next to no chance that the team that is being built from the ground up will be up at the pointy end, for the first year, that doesn't matter.
What matters is that little badge on the front.
I hope it's black and silver.
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