The Lola T70 Is Back as an Eco-Friendly V8 Road Racer

Once upon a time, there was a British race car builder called Lola, and enormously successful it was too. Its cars racked up countless wins in endurance and open-wheel racing, and it was one of the most respected names in motorsport, but it all came to an end in 2012 when the company went into administration.

A few years ago, though, it came back under the new ownership of entrepreneur Till Bechtolsheimer. The revived company’s first act was to get involved in Formula E – a worthy place to direct its efforts, but not exactly appealing to those who remembered its thunderous V8 sports cars of days of old.

This might be more up their street – it’s the Lola T70S, a revival of the T70, a Chevrolet V8-powered wedge hailing from the late 1960s and arguably the company’s most recognisable car. The new car looks almost totally identical to the original, has been designed using archival drawings and a detailed scan of the original, and retains Chevy V8 power. In fact, we’re told it’ll be, to all intents and purposes, identical to drive to the original. Despite the old-school recipe, though, the way it’s built couldn’t be more of the moment.

Two versions of the T70S will exist. The track-only competition version – the blue car in these pictures – is so close to the original that’ll it be fully eligible for FIA-sanctioned historic racing, and like its muse, it features a race-built 5.0-litre Chevrolet small-block V8. Its transaxle gearbox and double-wishbone suspension are identical to the original, too. It produces 530bhp, good for a 616bhp per tonne power-to-weight ratio, and Lola says it’ll hit 60mph in just 2.5 seconds and achieve 203mph.

Where the new car deviates from the original is that a roadgoing version is being built, too. That’s the silver one above. Dubbed the T70S GT, it utilises a modern 6.2-litre Chevy V8, set up to pass pretty much any global emissions standards and delivering 500bhp. To make it more amenable to road use, Lola has tuned the dampers, refined the interior ergonomics and fitted climate control and ‘limited’ luggage space – enough for a racing helmet, if nothing else. With a quoted 2.9-second 0-60mph run and a 200mph top speed, it’ll very nearly keep pace with its track-only cousin.

So far, so old-fashioned, but that’s turned completely on its head by the T70S’ manufacturing process. Despite the thumping great V8 nestled in the middle, Lola says this one of the most sustainable cars around. Its composite bodywork is made with an entirely new, patented technique called Lola Natural Composite System, which uses a combination of flax and basalt fibres and renewable resin for panels that are entirely petrochemical-free.

There’s around 100kg of magnesium in the car, too. Usually, this is produced in a big, smoke-belching foundry, but Lola has found a way of using solar power to extract it from seawater instead. It’s a process you need a PhD to even begin to understand, but it contributes to a manufacturing process that, Lola says, has a carbon footprint 54 per cent lower than if traditional methods were used. To back this up, the company is making a life-cycle assessment of the T70S’ carbon output publicly available.

Another innovation is the transmission. To operate, it’s an old-fashioned H-pattern manual, clutch pedal and all – presumably a four-speed, as in the original – but there’s no physical linkage at all between the gearknob and the actual gearbox. Instead, it uses a system of sensors to detect when you’re going for a change and instantaneously swaps cogs using a ‘shift-by-wire’ system, although Lola promises it’ll give you all the same physical sensations that a trad gearbox would.

For the 16 people that get to own one – the same production run as the iconic T70 MkIII, and encompassing both road and race spec – it’ll be a toy, a car for weekend blasts or for pleasing the crowds at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting. But it represents a lot more than that for the reborn Lola. Technical director Peter McCool says: 

“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.”

It all sounds like the best of both worlds – all the excellent noises and vibrations made by a thunderous V8 with none of the associated guilt, especially if you run it on sustainable fuel, as Lola will be during the testing phase. More importantly, it could serve as proof of concept for some technologies that could revolutionise the way performance and racing cars are made in the future, potentially providing another lifeline for combustion-powered goodness in the age of electrification – and that’s something we can surely all get behind.