Turn 8 of the verdant, roller-coaster Barber Motorsports Park circuit in the US state of Alabama is the slowest point of this beautiful and much-loved venue. They probably wouldn’t do it, but any IndyCar driver looking left as they exit this corner during the series’ annual springtime race weekend would probably notice a large building: the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.
The Barber complex is the playground of former dairy magnate and capable amateur racer George Barber, who died in February at the age of 85. And one of his last projects, the latest exhibit in the philanthropist’s museum, is very special.
“I think the spark might have been the Race Car of the Century by Motor Sport magazine”
The recreation of Lotus 49/R1 was part of Barber’s assemblage of the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars (the museum also houses the planet’s biggest motorcycle collection). Barber had to have a 49, because the readers of the magazine you are reading voted it as the Race Car of the Century in its August 2024 issue, during the celebrations for Motor Sport’s centenary.
Cosworth co-founder Mike Costin in Lotus 49/R1, Hethel test track, 1967 – with car designer Maurice Phillippe; Costin, 96, with the 49/R1 recreation
“I think the spark might have been the Race Car of the Century by Motor Sport magazine, which George was aware of,” reflects Classic Team Lotus chief Clive Chapman, son of Lotus founder Colin. “He felt that with his latest collection, the best thing to have as the crowning glory, as it were, would be a 49.”
Dick Scammell was one of the first to drive 49/R1 in ’67; and sat aboard in 2026
The problem is, it’s near-impossible to get hold of one. Which is where CTL’s archive came in handy, because it contains the original design drawings for the car. Chassis R1, which Graham Hill drove to pole position on its debut – and that of the epoch-defining Ford Cosworth DFV engine – at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix, would therefore be recreated. “Getting hold of a 49 is difficult, and we still had the title to R1, and George particularly liked the idea of recreating the very first one to the Hethel launch spec,” continues Chapman.
Two generations of Chapman in two generations of 49/R1
“We talked about it over, say, a six-month period, and then we really got serious about it at the beginning of last year, and he asked if we could have it finished by Christmas [2025]. We said, ‘Yeah, that’ll be fine,’ and then the deadlines were suddenly, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to get going.’ But we did it – we got it down on the ground and fired up just before Christmas.”
Jim Clark won four F1 grands prix in 1967 at the wheel of the 49 – and was sixth here at Spa
The thing is, it’s all very well having the design drawings – period components were also used as far as was possible – but not everything was drawn. Chapman explains that the flying over from the States last year of chassis R2 (in which Jim Clark took victory first time out at Zandvoort and which was restored by CTL in 2010) for the Clark weekend in Duns was a big help: “Chris MacAllister [owner] said, ‘That’s absolutely fine, you can look at the car, you can get the tape measure out as you wish,’ which I thought was particularly generous.”
“George particularly liked the idea of recreating the very first one to the Hethel launch spec”
Furthermore, the Ford archive, says Chapman, had “loads of really good photos of the Hethel launch” from May 1967, while Cosworth partner Mike Costin “provided us with some images of the car when it ran a couple of days before the launch”. Meanwhile, Team Lotus mechanic Dick Scammell “had some really good reference photos of the car in build, which was quite extraordinary because we don’t have images like that for any other car”.
With the help of readers, the Lotus 49 was voted Motor Sport’s Race Car of the Century 1924-2024
Ask Scammell why he pointed his camera at 49/R1 six decades ago, and he chuckles: “I’ve no idea really! It was a bit of an unusual project with the DFV as well, and I just took the camera along. I’m not a very good photographer so I don’t know what inspired me to do that. But I just took some pictures, and over a period too. I was pleased that I had them. Clive had quite a lot of drawings, but a lot of the details in those days were done on the spot and maybe drawn later.”
“Clive had drawings but details in those days were done on the spot and maybe drawn later”
One was the jump battery socket. “We couldn’t work it out because there was no drawing for that,” recalls Chapman, “and Dick said, ‘I made that a couple of nights before it ran, at home on the kitchen table.’ He told us how he’d done it, and then we retraced it. In fact his son Ben is busy recreating one for us now.”
Thousands of hours of work went into the recreation – and, of course, at its core is a DFV
Scammell’s previous work on aircraft inspired that idea. “We could never start the car because either the battery was too small or all sorts of things,” he says. “We ended up with a jump lead and I thought, ‘Life’s too short for that.’ So I decided to make one, which I’m sure wouldn’t pass health and safety today but in fact did the job, worked fine.
“A complete Formula 1 team in those days was six people, so there were four or five lads and me. We had a sheet metalworking department, who did a lot of the chassis work. That was made in a jig and so on.
Lotus 49Engine Cosworth DFV, 3 litres, 90-degree V8 |
“We helped where we could. And then after that it was up to us to put it together and come up with the bits and pieces that never got drawn in those days, like where the brake pipes were going to go, where to put the ignition system and so on and so forth.”
The Type 49 would race across four Formula 1 seasons, including three Monaco wins
The DFV, of course, enjoyed a remarkable 18 years of powering F1 machinery up to its obsolescence at the hands of the turbos in 1985, and underwent development throughout.
“A complete Formula 1 team in those days was six people, so there were four or five lads and me”
It’s impossible to fit a genuine 1967 version to the new R1, says Costin. “The breathing problem that we had with the early DFV, we had a modification to get the pressure equalised from the bottom of the engine to the top,” he explains of work on the oil pump. “That took air from the very bottom where the oil collected to be picked up by the pump and delivered that air up into one of the rocker boxes. You can’t go back that far because it would be impossible to find one of the old oil pumps. But they did make up some dummies, bolted to the top of the roller cover with Araldite all round them.”
“We helped where we could. And then after that it was up to us to put it together”
It led to a recreation that Chapman describes as “beautiful to drive. I drove it up and down Hazel Chapman Way [built in 1966 but renamed by Lotus Cars on May 19, 2023] a couple of times and took it out on the test track. Torque is actually relatively low and it’s just super-easy to drive. It just tootles around in first or second as long as you like, but then when you want to go faster it’s disarmingly quick. You suddenly realise, when you look at the rev counter, just how fast you’re going. ‘Oh hang on a minute – don’t overdo it.’”
“If we knew then what we know now, it was a very important thing to be involved in,” sums up Scammell, who along with Costin was on hand in March of this year at the Hethel launch – even that was recreated! – with Chapman, as did his father and Hill 59 years ago, taking to the wheel. “They’ve done a great job of making it look original, of making what was basically a period engine look like the very first engine from 1967.”
