Lot details
Registration No: N/A
Chassis No: 25R5
Mot Expiry: N/A

The following information was dictated by Cedric Selzer and Michael Strauss on the 9th February 2007. This was for the express purpose of its inclusion in the H&H Classic Auctions Ltd March 1st 2007 Cheltenham sale catalogue.

The Introduction
It is no overstatement to say that the Lotus 25 revolutionised Formula 1 car design. It was a complete break from conventional thinking, advanced even for Colin Chapman, and it must surely be one of the best kept secrets in motor racing.

Colin Chapman reckoned that the inspiration came from the steel backbone frame of the new Lotus Elan and the improved stiffness it gave. Would it work on a single seater? It all really came about from a meeting with Mike Costin from which he went home with a napkin and some sketches.

Although, the Lotus 25 was not the first monocoque single-seater racing car, it was the first one to prove the efficacy of monocoque design in Grand Prix racing. Based around two D-section tubes placed back to back and held in place by fabricated front / rear bulkheads, the chassis drew further strength from the instrument panel and seat back. Though, having the engine and gearbox assembly bolted directly to it helped boost rigidity as well.

This design was the brainchild of Colin Chapman and the car was arguably the grandfather of all current day Grand Prix cars.

The Car in Period
Built towards the end of the 1962 season, Lotus 25 chassis number R5 was originally designated to be Jim Clark's backup car for the South African Grand Prix in East London. However, with a World Championship riding on the weekend's outcome the decision was taken to promote 25 R5 from spare to race status on account of the fact that it used a carburettor-fed Coventry Climax V8 whereas 25 R4 (Clark's existing race mount) was fitted with a new fuel-injected unit. Shrugging aside any horsepower deficit, Jim Clark duly put 25 R5 on pole and was leading the race by a comfortable margin when a smoking engine forced him into retirement. At the time, the fault was attributed to an oil gallery plug falling out. However, in hindsight I think the problem was oil scavenge pump failure.

Jim Clark drove the following races aboard 25 R5 in 1963:
Pau GP 1st place Pole position Fastest lap.
Imola GP 1st place Pole position Fastest lap
Aintree - Pole position but Clark suffered problems during the race. He was called in and changed cars with Trevor Taylor who subsequently finished 7th.
BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone - 1st

Thereafter 25 R5 became Trevor Taylor's mount.
He finished 6th at Monaco but at Spa two weeks later, during practice, the car suffered suspension failure due to a bolt falling out of the rear wishbone mounting and it ended up in the marshal's post at Stavelot.

What was left of the car was brought back to the works and stripped but it was decided not to rebuild the car as a new monocoque was nearing completion and time was always a priority. The monocoque, which had been split in half, was placed at the back of the workshop awaiting the scrap man. Colin Chapman gave me permission to remove the damaged monocoque and other redundant parts - see the letter in the history file from Dick Scammell - which was not unusual as a number of Team Lotus mechanics owned Lotus 7s and other home made specials and a large number of parts from the F1 cars, ended up on these cars, once the parts had reached their "sell by date". The damaged monocoque and sundry parts from R5 were removed and stored in a mews garage in Belsize Park, NW London.

Cedric Selzer and Michael Strauss
During 1961 Michael Strauss (an old school friend of mine from South Africa) and I bought a Lotus 7 in kit form and assembled it. As I had access to redundant parts from Team Lotus, the car was eventually very heavily modified and mostly with Formula One parts. We later bought an Elan, which we soon sold, and with the money bought an Elan body and a racing chassis unit that we proceeded to build. In 1970 I designed and built a sports racing car for the FF100 series and raced that for two years, coming second in both seasons and losing a lot of money. Michael and I then jointly bought a racing yacht and spent the next eight years pursuing that hobby.

In 1980, Michael persuaded me to buy a Lotus 23 to rebuild which was raced very successfully in the hands of Chris Alford. We then later restored a Lotus 24 and a Lotus 44 but all throughout this period the remains of 25R5 were kept in Belsize Park. The project to rebuild R5 seemed too daunting at the time as we were simply unable to locate an engine and using the engine from the Lotus 24 was not an option as that complete car would be destroyed.

In my role as a partner in Roger Edwards Motors, we started restoring cars for customers. This was a commercial operation and formed no part and had no connection with my activities with Michael Strauss which was a purely private hobby. Obviously the publicity from racing the Lotus 23, 24 and finally the 25 as a hobby, resulted in a flow of business to Roger Edwards Motors. These included a number of Lotus 18s, Lotus 21s and a Lotus 33 and on one of my trips to South Africa I came across an enthusiast who wanted to dispose of some Lotus racing cars and many spares for these cars. There were masses of F1 spares as well because at the end of the South African Grand Prix the cars plus parts were sold off rather than having to pay for them to be sent back to the UK. All in all, this entire haul filled two containers.

However, and ignoring this feast of parts, I had, as indeed do all engineers that I know, kept every single part from every possible source over the years unless they were simply "shot" and irreparable. If there was the remotest chance of reusing them we kept them and so when the time came to rebuild any of these cars we simply had a ton of original parts available to use.

The Later Years and the Rebuilding of R5
As I was Jim Clark's engineer during 1963 when he won the World Championship, there was a natural and emotional link between him, me and the Lotus 25. That was why I took it away, even in its sorry state, because it was just such a big part of me and it just had to be put back together at some time. But what would be the catalyst?

In the early 1980s a Mr. Mike Beale from Canada rang me to tell me that a friend of his in Detroit had a V8 Climax engine for sale. I left on the 1pm plane, about three hours after the phone call, and found a complete engine and half of an engine all stripped down into thousands of parts. I bought them and flew back with the parts following on a later plane.

It now seemed possible for Michael and me to rebuild R5 so we removed the remains of the monocoque from the lock up and got to work in 1984. I'm really not quite sure how or why we would have started the work if we hadn't had the monocoque because it gave us all the pointers of where to start and where things went. It's a little bit like trying to reconstruct a "Coke" can - it's much better to start with one that has been stamped on than nothing at all.

The project took about three years to complete and was finished in 1987. Although, R5 was clad with Lotus 33 frontal bodywork when it first re-emerged, the frailty / weight of this original moulding (which was a patchwork quilt of filler underneath) meant that it was soon replaced by a modern facsimile. The car was raced many times subsequently by Rick Hall, Geoff Farmer, Chris Alford and Martin Stretton in the main. I didn't keep records but the main events it took part in were:
1991 Silverstone Festival - won
1992 Silverstone Festival - won
1997 Monaco Historics - on front row with Lotus 33 & 49 in third position. DNF
1996 Silverstone Festival - class winner & third overall
1997 Brands Hatch - won
2001 Good Revival - won and the first 1.5 litre car
2002 South Africa - three firsts & second

In 1996 the car appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed where it was driven by Rick Hall of Hall & Hall who is an exceptionally capable driver but was unfortunately really a little too big for the car. It was the fastest car of all through the speed trap on the first two runs, at 102mph, but on the third Rick missed a gear and the car hit the wall. The damage sustained was substantial and Rick himself set about rebuilding the car.

All the skins up to the seat back were bent, the front bulkhead was twisted, the radiator, oil tank and body were damaged and the impact had distorted the engine mountings. The rivets had to be drilled out and the front of the monocoque rebuilt from the seat back forward, the engine mountings repaired and a new nose cone fabricated. One of the front uprights sustained damage and was replaced. We decided to inspect the other castings as some of them were original, and replace as required. As Roger Edwards Motors had supplied new uprights for the restoration of the BRP FI car, I already had the pattern work made by Crosthwaite & Gardiner.

Conclusion
I am an intensely private man and whenever my car has been discussed I have never really "got involved" and maybe that was a mistake. But now it is time to put the record straight. Neither Michael nor I have ever claimed that R5 as it exists today is the same as when it was built in 1962, but what the car has beyond any doubt is a continuous history.

The monocoque itself was very badly damaged in the Spa crash, it was split in half, and there was very little left that was salvageable. All the useable parts were taken off it including steering wheel, bag tanks, drive shafts etc and so all that remained was left was the wrecked chassis (massively important), the uprights and the most vital thing of all, the original chassis plate which of course it still has. However the car was built or rebuilt, depending on your point of view, using many of the original parts that were simply available to Team Lotus, and therefore me, at the time, but they were nevertheless, original Lotus parts. The parts that I acquired subsequently, including the ones from South Africa were also used but there were some parts I didn't have and so these had to be remanufactured.

Like all racing engines, this one has been apart two or three times since it was first installed aboard the resurrected R5. The last time being in 2000, when I changed the bore/stroke ratio and fitted larger valves to bring the engine up to 1963 specification. It has done just three races in this configuration. Crosthwaite and Gardiner made the crank and liners and bored the block to suit and nothing else (see the letter from Dick Crosthwaite) and the engine is now 1497cc but consequently more powerful. The correct ZF gearbox is with the spare parts listed as part of this sale but not in the car. The gearbox in the car is a Hewland Mk5 gearbox which allows it to be driven properly as testified to by Geoff Farmer and Rick Hall who both refer to the car as a "great car" and "very quick".

The car has won many races in the hands of Chris Alford, Geoff Farmer and Martin Stretton and is ready to win many more and these will be at the most prestigious events which it is still eligible for. There were only ever seven Lotus 25s built and as far as can be seen there are absolutely no others for sale be it now or in the future.

This then is a reconstruction of R5, using original parts where possible, but not a brand new car using new parts. What it does have, to reiterate the point, is a continuous history. It didn't have a great deal of the original monocoque left before the Rick Hall crash but certainly there was not much left afterwards. So there may not be anything on the car now that was there when Jim Clark drove it.
So?
That is the nature of a racing car. But how many of them have only had two owners from new and just to cap it all - this one has also been owned and worked on by the very man that did the work for Jim Clark himself.

LOTUS 25R5 Spare Parts included with the car:
Lotus 33/25 nosecone
ZF Gearbox
Spare Crankshaft (long stroke)
Spark Boxes etc
Spare Gear Ratios (Hewland)
Lotus 33/25 nosecone
Miscellaneous Spares
The car has FIA and HSCC papers which can be found in the history file.

Please note: Roger Edwards Motors was commissioned to build another chassis for a Lotus 25 for a gentleman that already owns another Lotus 25 - chassis number 7. That was finished and was nothing to do with Cedric or Michael personally as such, but rather that it was simply a commercial venture, and was at no time Cedric's idea. This chassis is owned by the person who commissioned it in the first place and is still in the same state as it was when the commission was finished by Roger Edwards Motors.

Please note: In the information above it did state, and does in the catalogue as it was printed before we realised a mistake had been made, that the Monaco Historics race was in 1996 and Geoff Farmer came third. It has now been altered to the correct year and the correct result.