One cannot speak of the Lotus Elan without looking into the colorful life of its inventor, Colin Chapman. 
Such was the man’s legend that when word first filtered out about his fatal heart attack, more than a few quickly guessed that he had engineered his own death to get out of a tight legal and financial spot in which he had found himself.
Knowing the maker
Some will tell you Chapman is still alive today, some 20 years after, relaxing on an idyllic island shore, paying for the beachcomber’s lifestyle with money wrenched from the DeLorean DMC-12 shambles. As with Elvis, Chapman’s light shone so brightly throughout his life that when he passed away, people figured it was somehow not possible. An indefatigable person like Chapman simply couldn’t be dead. Read more . . .
While their American cousins quickly produced automobiles in mass manufacture, starting with Ransom E. Olds before the turn of the last century, the British seemed perfectly satisfied to approach car building as a cottage industry. Hammer out a few here, put together a few there, and perhaps build a little bit of earnings into the enterprise. This was the ourlin for many British car builders, from Morgan to Jaguar to MG to Triumph to Aston Martin.
Cord, Ruxton and Gardner all proposed production front-wheel-drive automobiles several years before Citroen joined the party. The importance of Citroen’s involvement is not that it was first with front-wheel-drive, but that it was the first company to make front-wheel-drive a true success. Unfortunately, that victory came almost simultaneously with Andre Citroen’s death, so the legendary French auto magnate never got to enjoy the fruits of his gamble.
Other times, great cars make virtually no impression on the market, save to point the way for others to follow. The Chrysler Airflow and Cord 810 are prominent examples of this phenomenon. Sadly, the 
Others offer virtues so obvious that they deserve top ranking from the moment they are introduced. So it is with the