What if Colin Chapman had never created Lotus?

In an alternative universe, the car industry might have taken some very different – but potentially very interesting – turns

Something that I do for fun (and a marginal amount of money) is to write a story and draw a picture about what might have happened if automotive history had gone in a different direction.

The first one I did concerned Colin Chapman sticking to his first love of architecture. What if he had stayed designing buildings and there was no such thing as Lotus cars?

I mean, Ferrari might have won more Formula 1 championships. Maybe Cooper would have stayed around as our cleverest racing car builder. Maybe Colin would have avoided his heart problems and the stress he experienced and still be with us, designing bridges across the River Thames.

Ultimately this sort of speculation is utterly pointless, but it is a massive amount of fun. There is no right answer to any of these speculations but the odd avenues you go down when thinking the unthinkable is quite remarkable and most of all surprising.

So I wondered if you had flights of automotive fancy. Not so I can nick them, mind you – I’ve got 50 in my head and counting.

Recently I got a great reaction to the 'what if Back to the Future featured not a DeLorean but that equally derided gull-wing plastic sports car which didn’t do very well, Bricklin?'.

So come on, what if Honda had bought Rover, or Austin had bought Datsun?

Please discuss.

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