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Jay Leno goes old school with 1966 Lotus Elan 26R

On the latest episode of Jay Leno's Garage the guest's are both from inside the garage: the man they call Professor Jim Hall, Leno's master fabricator, and the 1966 Lotus 26R that he spent 18 months building. The Elan 26R was the racing version of the Elan that Lotus founder Colin Chapman began building after watching privateer teams prep their roadgoing Elans for competition duty all over Europe. Built by the factory from 1964-1966, drivers like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart won silverware in the roadster called "the giant killer."
Hall, a veteran Lotus wrench, started with the 1966 Elan street car and turned it into a 26R that's arguably better than the factory original. Except for the engine block and head, original 26R body and Elan chassis, just about everything is custom built, highly modified or special order, from the fabricated oil pan, brake lines, safety wiring and oval exhaust tubing to the six-speed sequential transmission.
The episode is an unusually-long 21 minutes because, as an in-house build, Leno can go through the process of putting the whole roadster together. When he takes it for a drive and keeps going on about how it sings, you can hear it, too. It's worth the time to check out Mr. Hall's Opus in the video below.

Renault paid GBP1 to buy back its F1 team

Running a Formula One team is anything but cheap and straightforward, but it didn't cost Renault much to reacquire the Lotus team from Genii Capital. In fact, according to the latest reports, the French automaker paid just GBP1 – less than a buck fifty – for the privilege. Still, the process was deeply complicated. The reason Renault was able to get it so cheap is because the team was deeply in debt, part of which Renault will now assume. Less than a year ago, the team was said to be nearly $200 million in the red, and just a few months ago Renault came to its rescue to pay a $4 million tax bill to the British government. Under the terms of the new deal, Renault will assume the debt that the team's previous owners had accrued, but will be spared the nearly $150 million which its stakeholders loaned to the team. The history of the outfit based in Enstone dates back to 1981 when it was founded as Toleman Motorsport. French fashion giant Benetton bought the team in 1985, which in turn sold it to Renault in 2000. A decade later, after two world championship titles, Renault began stepping back its involvement in the team and gradually transferred ownership to investment firm Genii Capital, which has run it ever since under the Lotus name that it secured from the automaker under contract until 2017. Unable to fund a competitive team, Genii has now sold the team back to Renault, but the financial intricacies of the deal are far from straightforward. To start with, Genii and its subsidiary Gravity Motorsports (the team's parent company) didn't hold all the shares in the operation, so it bought back over 6 million shares from Whiterock Alliance to add to its own 60 million shares. The vast majority of those shares were then transferred (for that princely sum of GBP1) to Gringy (UK) Ltd, the shell company that technically owned the team in its Benetton days. Gringy (a wholly owned subsidiary of Renault) will hold a 90-percent stake in the team, with the last 10 percent remaining in Genii's hands and those of its investors. In the process, the outfit will now rejoin the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes among the F1 teams developing their own powertrains. Related Video: News Source: Motorsport.comImage Credit: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Earnings/Financials Motorsports Lotus Renault F1 genii capital

Lotus Evija to go for Nurburgring EV record

No matter how many times Nurburgring records are made or broken, they still stand as an important automotive measuring stick – at least in a marketing sense. Granted, there are different Nurburgring lengths even on the Nordschleife, and then it all comes down to whether the vehicle is a production car, or completely experimental, or electric, or. Â… Anyway, numbers are numbers, and some numbers are smaller than others, and the Nurburgring is a legendary place to go fast. One of the future plans for Lotus is to bring its upcoming Evija electric hypercar to the ‘Schleife and see if it can go faster than the NIO EP9. PistonHeadsÂ’ article on the Evija featured some interesting tidbits from Louis Kerr, principal platform engineer at Lotus. Kerr said the Evija should be “comfortably quicker” than the NIO EP9 at the Nordschleife, meaning they are gunning for a production EV lap time of way under 6:45. The EvijaÂ’s 70kWh battery pack has reportedly been optimized to provide 2MW peak flow for a sustained seven-minute period, which is practically tailored for a record Ring lap. After that, the batteries would heat up too much to provide peak power. The swappable battery pack can also take “ultra-fast” charging of up to 80kW thanks to active cooling of its li-ion cells manufactured by Samsung. The relatively handy swap-ability of the battery pack is done for the sake of future-proofing, as it means the 70kWh capacity can be upgraded by owners when technology progresses further. Kerr also said that the Evija should be able to hit 62mph from zero in less than the 3 seconds advertised so far, and the targeted 3-second figure should be treated as a “worst case scenario”. The Evija could thus also be able to reach 300 km/h (186 mph) even faster than 9 seconds, as stated. Lotus CEO Phil Popham also said Lotus would be able to build up to 130 units of the Evija, and that several contracts have already been signed with future buyers. News Source: PistonHeads Green Lotus Electric Supercars