The product of the Granatelli/Lotus collaboration was the Lotus 56, the first-ever turbine-powered Lotus car. Like the car driven by Parnelli Jones one year earlier, the 56 would also take advantage of four-wheel drive’s extra traction to harness the turbine’s power, this time a slightly different STN 6/76 from Pratt & Whitney that generated approximately 500 horsepower. However, that’s where the similarities ended.
Chapman’s infatuation with weight and aerodynamics resulted in a different layout for the 56, with the engine behind the driver — as opposed to alongside in the earlier Paxton Turbocar — and a radically narrow, doorstop-like wedge shape.
For the 1968 Indy 500, Granatelli and Lotus decided to campaign not one, but four of the Lotus 56s. During practice sessions, one of the cars piloted by Mike Spence set a new track record of 169.555 mph, so the team knew that it had a formidable contender on its hands. Later in the day, Spence took the wheel of a different Lotus 56 which appeared to be underperforming. Unfortunately, Spence was involved in a crash during his troubleshooting test laps in that second car, one which he didn’t survive.
[Featured image by The359 via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]
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