Eric's career as a racing driver was short lived, in his own words "The Mk1 proved too quick for me. It was a very hairy and inexperienced and could not do justice to the car". A year later, using his £2000 savings, Eric formed Lola Cars Ltd and designed and built the very first Lola which was constructed at Maurice Gomm's West Byfleet workshop. At the time this area was a hotbed of racing car construction with both Brabham and Cooper nearby.

During the next four years thirty-five of the multi-tubular spaceframe Mark 1 (usually Coventry Climax-engined) 1098cc sports racers were built at business partner (and future Lola works manager) Rob Rushbrook’s garage in Bromley, South London.

The cars were offered in a wide variety of configurations as regards choice of engine, gearbox, wheels and tyres to allow the purchaser to fit the car to his budget. Before the advent of the Mk1 sports racing was very much dominated by Lotus and Elva however success was immediate with Peter Ashdown in particular leading his class with win after win.

Amongst all of these successes was Lola's first continental victory at Clermont-Ferrand and the Mark 1 would be the first sports car of any size to lap Brands Hatch in under one minute.

Fortunately, many Mk1s have survived and can be seen at Historic events all around the world where they are still just as competitive.

The 997cc Ford 105E engine came with either two SU or Weber carburettors, the gearbox was a modified 4-speed BMC A series. Lockheed drum brakes were fitted all round as were magnesium bolt-on wheels. The Mk2 had a reputation for good handling but suffered engine and transmission reliability problems. Highlight of the 1960 season was a 1-2 at the Nürburgring for Dennis Taylor and South Africa's John Love.

Although no match for the Lotus 18 and the Cooper T52 results for the Mk2 were promising enough to see the creation in 1961 of the first rear-engined Lola, the Mk3, it's 18 guage spaceframe comprising of 1" and 3/4" tubes. The suspension was similar to the Mk2 but the fuel was carried in a central tank which gave the driver a forward seating position. A 5-speed Hewland VW based gearbox was fitted and the engine now used twin Weber 40 DCOE2 carbs. Results were generally poor and Broadley later admitted he wasn't happy with the design.

The Mk5 of 1962 was largely a redesign of the Mk3, results were adequate with a win at the Circuito del Garda for David Hitches and a second for the same driver at the Coupe de Paris at Montlhéry. There were several other top six finishes including a 3rd at Chimay for John Hine. The 1963 update, the Mk5a, won eleven national and international races including the Monaco GP support for Dick Attwood, other noted Mk5a drivers included John Hine, Dennis Taylor and Eric Offenstadt.

Lola's first flirtation with Formula 1 was early in the company's life when the Bowmaker Yeoman Team, run by the legendary Reg Parnell, approached Eric Broadley and asked him to design and build a Grand Prix Car for the 1962 season, the result was the Lola Mk4. The Mk4 was a conventional design by 1962 standards, it was based on the Mk3 Formula Junior car and comprised a spaceframe chassis with wishbone and radius rod based suspension front and rear and outboard springs and dampers. The car was initially fitted with a 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engine and a 5-speed Colotti gearbox, after a handful of races a V8 Climax was fitted. Drivers were the ex-motor bike World Champion John Surtees and the experienced Roy Salvadori. Results were mixed with Surtees winning the non-championship "2000 Guineas" at Mallory Park and leading for a long time at Reims in another non-championship race.

Unfortunately reliability problems ruined many Championship rounds, Surtees did take pole position for the Dutch GP at Zandvoort and took 2nds at Aintree for the British GP and the German GP on the mighty Nürburgring there was also a 4th at Monaco but otherwise the cars struggled. Continual changes were made during the season to the suspension and a 6-speed Colotti was tried. The modified version was named the Mk4a but sadly the design was overtaken by the opposition during the year. The cars continued into 1963 driven by Chris Amon and Mike Hailwood but they were no longer competitive.

It would be 1967 before Lola were involved in F1 and it wasn't with a Lola it was a Honda! John Surtees had been struggling with the overweight Honda RA273 all season and realising something needed to be done he approached Lola and a T90 USAC car was hastily modified to accept a Honda V12 via a tubular sub-frame and with revised suspension it immediately made its mark by winning the Italian GP and finishing 4th in Mexico. The car was officially the Honda 300, the Lola type number was the T130 but to all motor racing fans it will forever be the "Hondola". The 1968 Honda, a development of the RA300, was a combined effort between Lola's Eric Broadley, Honda's Yoshiro Nakamura, Derrick White and Surtees and to Lola it was the T180 but it raced as the Honda RA301, results were disappointing other than a 2nd in France and a 3rd in America.

After a brief hiatus Lola returned 1987 for perhaps their most serious tilt at F1 racing when they were commissioned by Gérard Larousse and his financial backer Didier Calmels to design and build a car. The resulting LC87, an Eric Broadley-Ralph Bellamy design, was a pullrod suspended, carbon composite chassis powered by a 3.5 litre Cosworth DFX and employing a Hewland FGB gearbox. Development was carried on during the year, mainly concentrating on weight saving and the LC87 took sixth on three occasions as well as finishing second in the "Colin Chapman Cup" for normally aspirated cars, drivers were Philippe Alliot and Yannick Dalmas.

Eric Broadley and Chris Murphy developed the car into the LC88 for 1988 the major difference was the fitment of a pushrod front suspension. The season was disappointing with no finishes in the points for any of the four drivers Alliot, Dalmas, Aguri Suzuki and Pierre-Henri Raphanel.

For the start of the 1989 season a Lamborghini V12 was fitted and the chassis designated LC88B. The 1989 design, the LC89, saw the addition of Gérard Ducarouge to the design team and the adoption of the Mauro Forghieri designed Lamborghini V12 engine and transverse gearbox. Pushrod suspension was used all round and following the current design thinking the chassis was very narrow. Engine reliability problems hampered early season development and the only decent finish was a sixth for Philippe Alliot in Spain, other drivers were Michele Alboreto, Eric Bernard and Yannick Dalmas.

A further development of the Lamborghini powered car was seen in 1990, the LC90 with Chris Murphy doing the design. Eric Bernard and Aguri Suzuki ran well all season taking several sixth places but the highlight was Suzuki's third at the Japanese GP.

The following year's LC91 saw a switch to Hart-tuned Cosworth DFRs as the Lamborghini V12 was no longer available, drivers continued to be Bernard and Suzuki. Sadly very poor reliability saw the Lola in the pits more than on the track and two early season sixths were the only highlights of a disappointing year.

It was only two years before Lola returned to F1 when they joined forces with BMS Scuderia Italia in 1993 to produce the Ferrari V12-powered T93/30. The engines were not the latest designs used in the works Ferraris but several developments behind. Sadly this was another Lola F1 disaster, the cars were too heavy, the engines under-powered and the cars failed to qualify on a number occasions and when they made a race reliability was a frequent problem. Some indication of their lack of performance can be gauged by the fact that two drivers of the quality of Michele Alboreto and Luca Badoer couldn't qualify higher than 21st all season but, even today, using a customer Ferrari engine in F1 is no guarantee of success.

Impressed by this Ford contracted Eric Broadley to develop the Mk6 and directly from this sprung the Ford GT40 series which dominated sports car racing until the end of the decade, winning the French 24 hour classic from 1966 to 1969.

During the mid-sixties, Broadley's latest sports car thinking resulted in the legendary T70 series of brawny V8-engined machines which first emerged in 1965 and immediately set the pace at home and overseas. Armed with an open Mk2 Spyder version, John Surtees won the first Can-Am Championship in 1966. Roger Penske knew a good thing when he saw one and was soon campaigning the later Mk3B (the closed coupe version) in long distance events. Driven by Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons, the Penske Lola won the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours, proving the design’s reliability.

Notable victories for the T70 include Denny Hulme at the TT, the Players and Martini Trophies and Frank Gardner with the Brands Hatch and Mallory Park Guards Trophies. Other T70 winners included Jo Bonnier, Brian Redman, David Piper, Trevor Taylor and Paul Hawkins.

Lola's first foray into Formula 2 was in 1964 when the new Formula 2 regulations came into force which meant that all the constructors were starting from a level playing field, design a chassis, buy a 1-litre Cosworth SCA engine and a Hewland 5-speed gearbox and you were ready to race.

Lola's first Formula 2 design was also one of their most successful in this class, the 1964 T54, it was effectively a Mk5A F Junior chassis with an SCA engine, driven by Dick Attwood it took second to Jim Clark's Lotus on its debut at Pau. This was swiftly followed by a win at Aspern and another second at the Nürburgring but as the new Lotus and Brabham designs came on song the T54 slipped back. Appearing later in the season the T55 showed no great improvement in form, although Attwood took second at Albi towards the end of the year and Tony Maggs took third in September at Snetterton.

The monocoque T60 was the 1965 offering and some more promising results were achieved during the year with Dick Attwood and Tony Maggs taking a 1-2 at the Rome GP and Chris Amon and John Surtees weighing in with wins at Solitude and Oulton Park. Another good result was Dick Attwood's runner up slot for the second year running at Pau.

1966 saw an updated T60 on offer, the T61, the season was dominated by the all-conquering Brabham-Hondas and the T61 saw very little success with only a fourth for David Hobb's at Barcelona to lighten the gloom. The other Midland Racing Partnership drivers, Dick Attwood and Frank Gardner managed the odd fifth and sixth places during the year. John Surtees debuted the new T62 at Karlskoga towards the end of the season and ran as high as third before a broken doughnut put him out.

BMW commissioned a chassis for the 1967 season to take their Apfelbeck-designed engine which featured radially-positioned valves, and these cars were always entered as BMWs although to everyone else the were the Lola T100. The BMW cars were largely unsuccessful, the engine was down on power compared with the Cosworth FVA, it was unreliable and the engine was physically tall and heavy which did not help with the handling. The BMW drivers were Hubert Hahne and Jo Siffert and over the season the only top six result was a fourth at the Eifelrennen for Hahne. John Surtees bought a pair of T100s for his own team and tried both the BMW and Cosworth engines, his team mate Chris Irwin found himself with the BMW-powered car whilst Surtees himself generally used a FVA. Surtees choice proved the right one and he steered his T100 to victory at both Mallory Park and Zolder, where he defeated Jim Clark, he did take a second at the Eifelrennen with the BMW-engined car showing that perhaps the Apfelbeck engine could be successful with the right driver.

1976 saw a semi-serious return to Formula 2 for Lola with the T450 which consisted of a conventional monocoque with a tubular engine subframe to take the BMW or Ford engine, suspension was narrow track and outboard. With no major teams or drivers, except arguably Mikko Kozarowitzky and Ian Ashley (who tried the BDX version), running the T450 results were poor with a number of non-qualifications. Roland Binder updated a car to a T450/460 (the T460 was the 1976 F Atlantic car) for two races in 1977.

The T550 was introduced in 1977, it was a much lightened version (by some 130lbs - 59kgs) of the T450, it was powered by Holbay-tuned Abarth engine. Roberto Marazzi had a single outing at Silverstone but failed to qualify. In addition Alo Lawler fitted a Swindon Ford BDX to his T462 F Atlantic car and tried the two UK rounds but non-started at Silverstone and non-qualified at Donington.

Unusually for 1981 Lola became involved with another company's design when they took on production of the Toleman TG280 which had been designed by Rory Byrne and John Gentry, it had largely dominated the 1980 Formula 2 season and for 1981 Lola offered a nearly identical copy, to Lola it was the T850. Unfortunately the works Docking-Spitzley Team only sorted out (inadequate) sponsorship at the last minute and as a result only received their cars 5 days before the first race. The delays and lack of sufficient finance put the team on the back foot all year but despite this Stefan Johansson won two races at Hockenheim and Mantorp Park and had a second at Vallelunga to finish 4th in the European Championship. Lola built no more Formula 2 cars and indeed Formula 2 was replaced by the newly introduced F3000 in 1985, a formula in which Lola would have some success.

For a company whose raison d’etre was building customer cars Lola and Formula 3 were for many years very uneasy bedfellows. Despite the huge popularity of the class over the last 50 years F3 was never seen as a very high priority and it showed in Lola’s lack of any real success for many years.

For a company whose raison d’etre was building customer cars Lola and Formula 3 were for many years very uneasy bedfellows. Despite the huge popularity of the class over the last 50 years F3 was never seen as a very high priority and it showed in Lola’s lack of any real success for many years.

To emphasise Lola’s apparent confusion no less than two designs were tried in 1979, the T672 (a revised T670) and the ground-effect T770. It made no difference, the T672 wasn’t competitive against the ground-effect March and Ralt and the T770 just didn’t work. However Mike Blanchett extensively tested the T770 during the off-season and it became the T770/2 in 1980 and suddenly Lola were back on the pace with Blanchett taking an early season 2nd and 3rd. Unfortunately the team running the T770/2 hit financial problems and only a few more races were undertaken.

1980 saw the end of Lola’s F3 participation until the end of 2002 when Lola in collaboration with noted Japanese manufacturer Dome produced the F106/03 which was immediately on the testing pace against the previously all-conquering Dallaras. In Japan there were two victories in the 2003 All Japan Championship whilst in the UK Adam Carroll had some promising runs in his F106/03. Things were even better in 2004 with Brazilian Joao Paulo de Oliveira taking second in the standings in the Japanese Championship with six victories and Danny Watts winning a round of the British Championship with the F106/04, the first non-Dallara victory in the UK for 11 years.

Success continued into 2005 with Danilo Durani winning two British F3 Championship rounds and Stephen Kane one in their Lola B05/30 Mugen Hondas. In 2006 Ho-Pin Tung won the very competitive German F3 Recaro Cupin the Lola B06/30 Opel-Spiess which dominated the season but once again other classes of racing took greater priority and Lola once again faded from F3.

These cars were among the fastest of the enormously popular Group C cars, achieving almost 250 mph at Le Mans and they went on to have long and distinguished careers at Daytona, in America, and in the Japanese Sportscar Championship and dominate Historic Group C racing today.

These were golden Indycar years too, 1990 saw Al Unser Jr take the laurels in the Galles-Kraco Lola Chevrolet, in 1991 it was the turn of Michael Andretti (Newman-Haas Racing) and Bobby Rahal (Rahal-Hogan) won CART’s Indy Car Championship. In Japan, Ukyo Katayama won the 1991 All Japan Formula 3000 Championship and the following year it was Mauro Martini with Nova Engineering, Lola also taking three of the top four positions.

In 1993, Nigel Mansell won the Indy Car championship for Lola and the Newman Haas Team after leaving the Williams Formula 1 team. The 1993 Indianapolis 500 saw Lolas finish from second to tenth after Arie Luyendyk took pole position with a lap of 223.967 mph. It was another victorious season in Japan with Kazuyoshi Hoshino taking the All Japan crown. Further Championships would follow in 1995 and 1997, and subsequently, Lola was rewarded with the contract to supply spec cars for the one-make FIA International F3000 series.