The Lotus collection of Olav Glasius will be offered for sale at the 2012 Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed auction, scheduled for Friday 29th June on the grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, England. The Glasius Lotus Collection is expected to realise in excess of £1.5 million.
As a young motor racing enthusiast watching the legendary Jim Clark dominate the 1963 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in a Lotus 25, Olav Glasius became a lifelong fan of this legendary British marque. As a Dutch textile industrialist, Olav’s lifetime of work and passion for race cars has allowed him to accumulate likely the world’s largest privately owned collection of Lotus road and racing cars.
James Knight, Group Motoring Director of Bonhams, said, “We are both honoured and delighted to have been entrusted with the sale of Olav’s superb collection. The Lotus marque is hugely respected and boasts all the credentials you could wish for: an innovative and charismatic owner in Colin Chapman, one of the finest drivers the sport has ever known in Jim Clark, and manufacturer of sports and racing cars that could take on and beat the best the others could offer. We have enjoyed watching Olav successfully compete with his cars at historic racing events, including Goodwood, and it seems fitting that the collection will be offered for sale at the Festival of Speed where Lotus will be the event’s celebrated marque.”
The Glasius Lotus Collection will be offered for sale at the 2012 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where, most suitably, the 2012 event is to highlight the 60th anniversary year of the Lotus marque. The collection comprises 24 vehicles, covering a huge span of Lotus innovation and achievement from 1953 to the present day.
In addition to an array of historic Lotus racing cars ranging from Mark VI through Marks VIII and IX, one of the desirable Team Lotus works Le Mans veteran Type 11s, to an original and unspoiled Formula Junior Lotus 27 and ex-Formula 1/InterContinental Lotus Type 18 – the Collection also includes road-going super cars from a Lotus Elite Series II to a Lotus Esprit Turbo. Capping the Glasius Lotus Collection is a trio of prototype/one-off concept cars of the type becoming increasingly popular with organisers of international Concours d’Elegance and design-excellence events.
The sale of the Glasius Lotus Collection will offer other enthusiasts the opportunity to acquire rare Lotus cars, as well as providing a window into the lifetime work of Colin Chapman, Lotus Cars’ creator, mastermind, and design genius.
The Glasius Lotus Collection cars demonstrate many of the most significant design innovations wrought by Colin Chapman and the dedicated team of gifted specialist he built around himself from the 1950s to the 1980s. Under his leadership the Lotus marque always punched far above its weight, taking the fight on-circuit to overwhelm many of racing history’s most revered factory names, and to re-write the record books.
Doug Nye, Bonhams Motoring Historian, commented, “There are few teams that encapsulate the romance of the ‘little guys beating the big guys’ better than Team Lotus and Olav Glasius’s remarkable collection, which he has assembled with such love and painstaking care over so many years, truly embodies the essence of what Colin and his successors have been all about.”
For more information, visit www.bonhams.com/cars.
[Source: Bonhams; photo credit: LAT Photographic]
Plug and play Lotus Collection – that’s what I want for my birthday!