An affordable, uncompromising sports car.

Byline: NICK KURCZEWSKI

The Lotus Europa may not have been the first mid-engined road car to enter the sports car arena in 1967, but it was the one that would make the most waves. Produced until 1972, the Europa sold more than 9000 copies, a package that reflected Lotus founder Colin Chapman's philosophy of pure driving dynamics in an affordable sports car.

The Europa combined Grand Prix technology with Chapman's insistence that less weight, not brute force, was the best means of maximizing performance. Lotus took the steel backbone chassis of the front-engine Elan and, essentially, flipped it front-to-back for mid-engine use, infusing the Europa with Formula One flair, much in the way automakers use paddle shifters in today's road rockets. The resulting Y-shaped frame was light, strong and ready for a free-revving engine to propel the new mid-engined Lotus down the road or track. But which engine to use? The answer came from an unlikely source.

In 1965 Renault had introduced its revolutionary R16. This small, boxy hatchback employed a 1470-cc gem of an engine. The pushrod four had an aluminum block with wet liners, a cooling fan operated via a thermostatic switch, and an alternator-all fairly cutting edge for the time. Attach-ed to the front of the engine was an all-syncromesh, aluminum-cased four-speed transmission. Luckily for Lotus, the unit was longitudinally mounted in the R16. Once again, Lotus engineers took a good thing and flipped it around. With the transaxle/engine turned front-to-back, it became a perfect mate to Chapman's 1300-pound bantamweight.

The steel backbone chassis is bonded directly to a thin fiberglass body. There is even a tray that seals the underbody, and the resulting drag coefficient of 0.29 is hugely impressive, as is the chassis' stiffness. Lotus engineering director Ron Hickman inspired the Europa's exterior lines and the design was refined for production by John Fraylings. Whereas the front is lithe, low ...