Lotus

The Lotus badge still carries the initials of its founder, Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, whose “performance through light weight” ethos remains ingrained in the company despite his premature death in 1982. Motorsport-obsessed Chapman formed Lotus Engineering Company in 1952, with Team Lotus coming two years later to become one of the most formidable grand prix teams of the ’60s and ’70s with seven constructors’ titles and six driver’s titles in Formula One – with legendary drivers (such as Jim Clark) and legendary race cars (such as the Lotus 79, with its “ground effects” aerodynamics). 1956’s Lotus Eleven started a trend for models beginning with the letter E, including the Elite, Elan, Elise, Evora … and the Esprit that became the company’s most indelible model after transforming into an underwater car in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Group Lotus’s consultancy subsidiary Lotus Engineering has helped develop cars for other manufacturers, including the legendary Vauxhall Lotus Carlton of the ’90s and a range of models from Malaysian parent company Proton.