Legendary '60s sportscar racer is back, with Lola set to build both road and track variants
While the 1960s were a golden age for sportscar racing, the Lola T70 stands proud as one of the greats. It won the first Can-Am championship, for one thing, as well as taking victory at the Daytona 24 Hours a few years later.
Ford and Ferrari may have dominated the headlines back then, and the histories we watch now, but the results won’t forget Lola. The T70 was an icon of the era, successful back then and still very competitive in historic racing. Now the recently rejuvenated Lola Cars - brought back in 2022 and competing in Formula E - is relaunching its most famous car. The T70S racer and T70S GT road car are what might commonly be called continuation cars, much like thehave produced; they have been created using ‘original archival drawings, augmented by high- resolution scans of the finest period examples, to ensure complete authenticity.’ There are Chevy small blocks in the middle, as little interior has can be gotten away with, and the kind of drop-dead design that only could have happened in the 1960s. But these Lolas are rather more than just homages, thanks to very advanced new production techniques. Lola describes its approach to the project as ‘respectful refinement’, focusing on ‘perfecting the details that historical constraints once limited.’ Both the track car and street machine are going to be built using something called Lola Natural Composite System, patent-pending new bodywork that will cloak an aluminium monocoque. Resembling carbon fibre, LNCS is made using plant and basalt fibres, glued together using waste from sugar cane processing. Lola says it offers better tensile strength against glass-fibre composites, and actually ‘improved impact damage tolerance’ compared to GRP and carbon composites. Handy to know for the race car. And evidently the new material is no impediment to design, these T70s looking as glorious in 2026 as they would have six decades ago. There’s an environmental benefit to the new bodywork as well. While these claims always seem a tad disingenuous when talking about naturally aspirated V8 racing cars, it’s reckoned that there’s a reduction of around 54 per cent in CO2e making things the Lola way against traditional methods. Using the LNCS bodywork brings a 63 per cent reduction, they say - from 2,533kg CO2e to 926kg CO2e - and employing solar-powered electrolysis in making magnesium alloy also has benefits. In fact the claim there is of an 80 per cent reduction in CO2e. Probably not the main factor in consideration for those buying a T70S, though it’s great to see a small British automotive outfit leading the way on innovation. Lola believes that both its magnesium alloy process and the composite bodywork - the only part of the car using a different material to 1969 - are automotive firsts. Obviously a Chevy small block is very much not in a British sports car for the first time, and will remain a core part of the Lola charm. For the race car it’s a 5.0-litre V8 with 530hp; weighing less than 900kg, the T70S will boast more than 600hp per tonne and exceed 200mph. For those who want to do more than just trouble noise meters at track days, all the new Lola race cars will come with an FIA Historic Technical Passport so they’re eligible for competition. Imagine taking on Porsche 908s and Ford GT40s in this. Just bring your A-game: Lola says that the transaxle and double wishbone suspension are ‘period-correct’, as befits its status as a continuation car, which ensures that ‘driving dynamics remain true to the original’... For the roadgoing T70S GT, a 500hp 6.2-litre V8 from the Chevrolet stable is used. While 30hp down and 30kg up on the motorsport car, it’s still a sub-900kg, 200mph machine. Lola suggests that the GT ‘retains the fundamental DNA of the race car while incorporating subtle enhancements for usability’, which amounts to some storage, some Alcantara and climate control - ‘minimalist but not austere’ was the aim. This is very much a historic race car that’s been made road legal, so those after an accommodating retro road racer best look elsewhere. One bit of additional equipment is headsets, for example. While there are tweaks to the suspension and gearbox, plus that slightly less aggressive V8, we’re told all changes ‘have been executed with restraint’, so that the car’s ‘character and driver-machine connection remain authentic and uncompromised.’ Bring it on… Lola will build 16 units of the T70S and T70S GT, so it’s going to be a very rare beast. Certainly no danger of missing them, at least. ??Peter McCool, Lola’s Technical Director, said: “Driving the T70S will be a chance to experience the past and future of motorsport simultaneously. An entirely unique example of groundbreaking innovation in advanced sustainable materials, this project provides a blueprint for the future of historic motoring and motorsport.” Nice to have some good motorsport news for once. Expect production of the 16 cars to begin in earnest soon.
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