LOLA: THE T70 & CAN-AM CARS (Evro Publishing)

Gordon Jones

ISBN 978 1 910505 53 3 Reviewer’s own copy

An elegant car, in both coupé and open versions, the Lola T70 was a sports-racing car with a long international racing career and was long overdue for a full-length ‘biography’. This stunning new book has had a very long gestation period as the initial manuscript was lost in transit between Gordon Jones and his initial ‘collaborator’, Anders Hedborg. Amazingly, it was found and returned to Gordon 24 years later! This led to the project getting under way again, with the benefit of additional information gained from previously unavailable sources.

To emphasise the ubiquity of the T70 and its immediate cousins, the list of races in which these cars took part runs to 47 closely-typed pages; starting with the elegant MkVI GT with its Cortina MkI tail-light lenses, and ending at Can-Am Road, Atlanta in November 1974. The T70 Spyder and coupés were a mainstay of sports car racing, in world endurance championship races as well as Can-Am and in other events as far afield as Brands Hatch, Lourenço Marques, Laguna Seca and Surfers Paradise.

Despite the book’s title, it actually covers other Lola models, mostly of the Can-Am variety, from the bluff-fronted T260 pedalled by Jackie Stewart to the low and wide T222 and 310 that saw out the Can-Am years. Although wildly unsuccessful, the Aston Martin-powered coupés aren’t forgotten either.

Demonstrating the incredible amount of research involved, there’s a report on every single race in which the Lolas participated in this period and the large 576-page book contains many hundreds of superb photos, plenty of them from pretty obscure events. And it’s not just the cars – from Eric Broadley to team owners and drivers from outfits large and small – the Lola people are very much part of this story.

A stunning achievement!