Cents and sensibility

How Jim Clark attempted to defeat London parking charges… until he was rumbled

Witnessing an unseasonally bitter Christmas exchange between a disgruntled driver and an intransigent parking warden reminds me of another spin-off from the Lotus Indy years. When Jimmy won the 1965 500 his total share of prize money exceeded £46,000, in contrast to his Formula 1 World Championship earnings from 13 races that year, which totalled just £13,340. See why those ’60s heroes raced any kind of car, anywhere, anywhen?

Andrew Ferguson told a lovely story about Clark, the ever-careful Scot: “One of the bonuses of Indy was to find that one-cent coins were exactly equivalent in weight and size to the UK sixpence, which was worth six times as much and common currency in British parking meters…” The Lotus crew brought a stash of one-cent coins back home, and when Jimmy heard of the discovery he asked for some, too. Fergie: “Several months later he told me he had given up using them; he had come out of his London flat one morning to find one-cent coins in little piles on the roof of his Elan, and a parking meter attendant waiting to talk to him…”