by John Tipler

Published 2000 by Sutton Publishing Ltd., England ISBN 0-7509-2389-X

John Tipler was a JPS press officer in the early 1970s when Team Lotus was sponsored by Players Tobacco.  The best literary fruit of his association with the team is his book on the Lotus 25 / 33, with its insight and personal anecdotes from the contacts he made.  Those contacts weren't able to help him as much with first ten years of Lotus, as covered in this 1948 - 1968 study.

Nineteen pages are devoted to the Eleven, and that is fair given the size of the book (160 pages).  But one is not likely to learn anything new about Lotus in 1956-58 from what Tipler has to say.  Unfortunately the errors in the text -- at least as far as the Eleven is concerned -- are frustrating in that all could have been avoided with better research.

This book should be easy to find, and the photo quality is good.  But to better understand the early years at Lotus it will be necessary to search for some of the rarer books reviewed here.

-- Jay Sloane