Lola Cars is one of the most feted names of racing history, and the brand has recently been revived under new ownership. The first output from its new strategy is a recreation of the Lola T70 racer, the 1965 successor to the Mk6 (which spawned the Ford GT40). But the T70S isn’t merely a rebuilt classic. Like Lola’s Formula E team, it has serious sustainability credentials. I talked to Technical Director Peter McCool and Executive Innovation Director Matt Faulks about what makes it different.
Lola T70: A Racing Recreation With A Split Personality
Lola plans to build just 16 T70S cars, but in two versions. The track-focused model is designed to qualify for a Historical Technical Passport (HTP) and compete in historic motorsport, while the GT will be road legal.
“The reason behind it was combining all the innovations that Lola wants to do,” says McCool. “Using the most iconic and one of the prettiest Lolas, the T70, was a good benchmark.” Formula E’s tight regulations limit what Lola can change, whereas the T70 offered freedom to innovate while retaining the original design and introducing more sustainable materials.
“The T70 is one of the most important cars to Lola,” says Faulks. “Back in 1970 Lola wanted to do a road version of the T70, and Sbarro actually did a few cars because Lola was too busy going racing to do a road car.” The new Lola Cars wanted more people to experience the T70, which meant tackling homologation and emissions for the GT. “This is a challenge for any low volume project, especially one with a massive V8 in the back.”
Old-School Lola T70 Character, Modern Engineering
Maintaining HTP eligibility meant staying faithful to the original design. Lola scanned the drawings into CAD to create a complete 3D model, then used modern manufacturing and more sustainable equivalents of the original materials. Rather than hand-forming aluminum panels, suppliers around Silverstone have been called upon to laser cut and CNC fold them to tight tolerances.
The race T70S has a 5-litre Chevrolet small-block V8 producing 530bhp and can hit 60mph in 2.5 seconds, while the road-oriented GT uses a 6.2-litre alternative with 500bhp and takes 2.9 seconds. Both versions of the car can exceed 200mph. “Luckily we were able to work with GM on this,” says Faulks. For him, the road car still had to retain the DNA of a T70, which meant a Chevy small block and the character of a Hewland H-pattern gearbox. The difficulty was that Hewland no longer makes one suitable for the application, so Lola had to find a way to reproduce the experience while giving the GT performance that is more accessible on the road.
Lola has cleverly created an H-pattern gearbox for the GT road car that feels exactly like the original but is actually changing gears by wire so drivers can’t make a dangerous mistake. “We have created a Lola version of the Hewland gearbox, which is essentially a developed version of a GT3 race car gearbox, so six speed sequential, but the driver interface with it is by a H pound selector. A lot of the work went into that,” says Faulks. “We’ve developed with that in house at Lola over the last six months.”
Lola T70: Making A V8 Racer More Sustainable
Where the T70S really breaks new ground, however, is in sustainability. The new car uses aluminum and steel with high recycled content, but McCool highlights three more distinctive innovations. The first is magnesium: historic T70s use more than 100kg of it, traditionally produced using the carbon-intensive Pidgeon process. Lola instead extracts magnesium from saltwater using electrolysis powered by solar energy and employs lower-carbon shielding gases during casting, creating what McCool says is a significantly cleaner supply chain.
Lola has also innovated the bodywork of the T70S. “It’s completely natural, so it’s got no petrochemicals, not even the resin,” says McCool. “That’s derived from sugar cane. It’s got basalt and flax in the sandwich construction, so they’re all natural fibers and materials. We use these to create composite equivalent carbon fiber.” The new bodywork is called the Lola Natural Composite System (LNCS). “Carbon fiber and epoxy resin have a massively high carbon footprint. We’ve developed comparable panels that have 20 times less carbon footprint than carbon fiber.”
“We’ve patented our process because we think that this will go on to replace the current sustainable components that the OEMs are using,” adds McCool. “We think our body work material is a step change better than the sustainable panels that have been used today that are completely flexible. All the body panels use LNCS. It’s a fantastic material.” McCool hasn’t tried to reduce the T70S’s weight with LNCS, instead opting to make the bodywork stiffer and more durable for the same weight, to satisfy the HTP. But the T70S is still very light: the race car weighs 860kg while the GT is a little heavier at 890kg.
The third innovation is software that calculates the carbon footprint of every component. “I can say with a high level of confidence what the carbon footprint of the car is,” says McCool. The methodology will be used on subsequent Lolas and could also be offered commercially to other manufacturers. The system required Lola to audit its supply chain and select suppliers able to provide the emissions figures it needed.
McCool admits scaling the approach beyond low-volume production would require further work. Lola has also partnered with Coryton Fuel to develop the T70S using carbon-neutral biofuels, although owners can use conventional fuel. The result, says Faulks, is a remarkably low manufacturing footprint. Lola calculates that the HTP race car produces about 4.4 tons of carbon to build.
Keeping The Lola T70 Experience Intact
I had some hot laps in a T70S prototype at HORIBA MIRA in Nuneaton, driven by former Formula 1 racer and T70S development driver Johnny Herbert. Even by modern standards it feels ferociously quick, with huge cornering grip and a V8 snarling immediately behind the cabin.
The problem with low-volume premium cars like Lola produces, and indeed luxury performance cars in general, is that there can be a conflict between electrification and the passion fans have in the brand. Witness the reaction to the electric Ferrari, for example. Lamborghini has focused on hybrids for this reason. “There’s a mad responsibility not to remove the fun from these things,” says Faulks. “But as we develop our cars, we look at the functional safety of them much more, and how to build better vehicles. If you’re doing a project like we are with T70, and you’re doing a road car version of it, it doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to do that.”
“The driver’s interaction with the car is just as pure as it is in the HTP race car version,” adds Faulks. “The only difference is if you make a mistake, the road car will politely tell you that you’ve made a mistake. We’re not talking about ABS and traction control, because that’s wrong ethos for this vehicle. It still wants to be a T70, but what we are talking about is that if you are respectful to the car, as anyone driving the HTP version would be, it won’t bite you for it.”
While the HTP car means component restrictions, the beauty of the road car is that it allows improvements that maintain the character of the car, only better. “We were able to do things like design our own dampers, so we worked with R53 on that,” says Faulks. “That damper has allowed us to unlock a lot of performance in the tire, because you want a modern, legal road car tire. The tire and damper have allowed us to run a modern bearing pack and a few other elements, all of which contribute to long-term reliability in a road car.”
“When you look down the list, the monocoque, wish bones, subsidiary pickup points, steering rack, are all exactly the same,” continues Faulks. “We’ve added durability and performance where we can change to a more modern component without hurting the soul of the car. It doesn’t have any power steering, doesn’t have ABS, doesn’t have traction, but what we have done is brought in those elements that will save you if you make a mistake, so in a conventional dog engagement gearbox, if you got first instead of third, you’d spin, you break the gear box, it would be a pretty efficient way of ruining your day on the road. With the Lola T70S GT, if you make the same mistake, it will simply say miss shift, try again.”
Where Next After The Lola T70
Sales of the 16 build slots of the T70S are reportedly going well, although Lola has not said how many have been filled so far. Faulks also sees a wider future for Lola road cars because GT3 and GT4 racing is based on production models. “We’re not saying we’re doing that, but it’s a really good conversation point internally.”
Lola is also open to working with other manufacturers. Faulks says an OEM wanting to race could use Lola’s expertise, while the company has already discussed an “AMG-like opportunity” with one manufacturer. Formula E creates an obvious route for similar collaboration with an EV brand, with GEN4 truly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with electrified performance.
The sustainable supply-chain technology could also be offered to OEMs. “The whole point is to develop these technologies out so others can benefit from them,” says Faulks, citing Lola’s lower-carbon alternative to the Pidgeon magnesium process.
More heritage projects are possible too beyond the Lola T70. Faulks says Lola wants to expand this side of the business and support existing cars. Its archive has been fully indexed, enabling the company to provide drawings and remanufacture parts for models spanning the Mark One to its later LMP racers. The T70S might look resolutely backwards, but its real significance lies in what Lola learns from building it. If those sustainable materials and engineering ideas find their way into future race and road cars, this recreation of Lola’s past could turn out to be a surprisingly important part of its future.
