- Add information from these pages [1][2] about Chapman's chairs, coffins, and boats, and (especially) the Lotus Microlight aircraft he designed with Burt Rutan.
- Organize page into sections
- Find a PD or GFDL picture of Chapman
- I would consider removing speculation linking the dual-chassis debacle with his health. In exchange I hope someone could describe the singlemindedness that Chapman displayed when it came to, well, everything. Examples would include his lawyerly interpretation of the rules and a mania for "purity" of design. (Would it be incorrect to imply that Chapman added material to a part only after its manufacture proved unworthy of its divinely inspired specification?) He designed a "perfect" space-frame car, The Mk. VIII, which virtually had to be dismanted to make adjustments to the less-than-perfect engines that were available at the time. Could a case be made that in using springs as suspension arms and structural tubes as water conduits (early designs), or, later, engines and tubs as stressed chassis members and chassis themselves as inverted wings, that he wasn't designing parts so much as organizing systems? To me, his desire to control every aspect of company, team, and cars, and to win based on his own cleverness, by his interpretation of the rules, may have been a strain that no heart could endure forever (and yes, this speculation is as groundless as his being done-in by the rejection of the dual-chassis.) bkm -- pdx,or,usa
|
