SIMPLIFLY AND ADD LIGHTNESS

At the peak of Lotus's powers, boss Colin Chapman bought himself the coolest aircraft in motorsport history... 45 years later, TopGear's on a mission to find it again

- OLLIE KEW

IT'S not just one of the of all time. IT'S the sSheer 1970S-NCcsSS thhat's of T the corduroy scale.

The caramel brown Esprit. The cocoa-not-Coco suit. Those sideburns. A beaming Colin Chapman perches triumphantly on the wedge bonnet of his company's flagship sports car. It's just been immortalised as James Bond's submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me. His team is the reigning Formula One world champion, winning five constructor titles in the past decade. Lotus is flying high. Literally. Chapman's treated himself to a new plane and its tail number is a joke.

GPRIX is a Cessna 414A 'Chancellor' the latest model from the American light aircraft giant. Each wing carries a 345bhp six-cylinder engine, ready to power it to a maximum altitude of 30,800ft. It'll carry seven and cruise at 270 miles per hour, but it does its best work standing still. Despite its nose-to-tail black paint job adding unnecessary weight and making the aircraft rather stuffy inside on sunny days (there's a reason almost all commercial aircraft are white) Chapman is never one to miss a publicity opportunity. Heck, this is the man who brought sponsorship liveries to motor racing. His new corporate runabout is decked out in the gold pinstriped John Player Special livery, with a subtle union jack aft of the pilot's side window, and the owner''s name scripted along the fuselage.

The photo isn't just a rare glimmer of sub-zero cool from the decade that taste forgot. It's also poignant, because it represents Chapman's peak. Lotus would never win another F1 world title. In four years, the brilliant engineer would suffer a fatal heart attack, embroiled in legal controversy surrounding the demise of the doomed DeLorean.