1972 Lola T290

See Pictures of this Car Open Dossier

Chassis No. HU8



Eins der wenigen Autos mit Targa Florio-Historie • komplett dokumentiertes Auto mit belegbarer Historie • rennfertiger Zustand, frisch aus der Restaurierung • ideal für Veranstaltungen wie Masters Series, Le Mans Classic, Oldtimer GP, CER und Orwell SuperSports


One of the few cars with period Targa Florio history • fully documented history • fresh out of restoration and fully race prepared • ideal for the Masters series, Le Mans Classic, Orwell SuperSports or CER

Model history:

Established in 1958 by Eric Broadley MBE, Lola is proud to be Great Britain’s longest-serving manufacturer of racing cars. After an extraordinary rise to prominence, in which it mastered all spheres of the sport from humble club classes to Formula 1, and endurance sports racers to Indycars, Lola has continually been at the forefront of the worldwide motorsport industry. Its enviable position has been consolidated under the ownership of Martin Birrane since 1997, with the introduction of advanced technologies to keep its products winning in the 21st century.

Drivers of Lola cars scored points in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship from the marque’s debut season in 1962. Lola’s roll of honour also includes no fewer than nine CART/OWRS championship titles, three Indianapolis 500 wins and the 1978 USAC Triple Crown, eight US/European/Tasman Formula 5000 titles, victory in the 1963 Monaco Formula Junior Grand Prix, the inaugural Can-Am Challenge series of 1966, the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours, the 1973 European 2-litre Sportscar Championship, five successive Can-Am titles, eight Japanese Formula 3000 crowns, numerous FIA International F3000 championships and three Sports Car Championships in 2001 alone. Additionally, Lolas have carried amateur and professional competitors to countless championships and race victories on every major continent. Eric Broadley builds 1172cc Ford-engined Broadley Special and races it with his cousin Graham.

The roots of the remarkable Lola story were sown in 1957, when quantity surveyor Eric Broadley built the 1172cc Ford-engine „Broadley Special“ for the „Ford Ten Special“ class and raced it with his cousin Graham, the Special was a winner and almost immediately Broadley started designing a Climax-engined successor which was the basis of the Mk1. Eric’s career as a racing driver was short lived, in his own words „The Mk1 proved too quick for me. I was a very hairy and inexperienced and could not do justice to the car.“ A year later, using his £2000 savings, Eric formed Lola Cars Ltd and designed and built the very first Lola which was constructed at Maurice Gomm’s West Byfleet workshop. At the time this area was a hotbed of racing car construction with both Brabham and Cooper nearby. During the next four years thirty-five of the multi-tubular spaceframe Mark 1 (usually Coventry Climax-engined) 1098cc sports racers were built at business partner (and future Lola works manager) Rob Rushbrook’s garage in Bromley, South London. The cars were offered in a wide variety of configurations as regards choice of engine, gearbox, wheels and tyres to allow the purchaser to fit the car to his budget. Before the advent of the Mk1 sports racing was very much dominated by Lotus and Elva however success was immediate with Peter Ashdown in particular leading his class with win after win. Amongst all of these successes was Lola’s first continental victory at Clermont-Ferrand.

The Mark 1 would be the first sports car of any size to lap Brands Hatch in under one minute and Stirling Moss still competes in his privately owned MK1 in historics to the present day. Fortunately many other Mk1s have also survived and can also be seen at Historic events all around the world.
Given that in its brief career Lola Cars had only built sports cars it was perhaps surprising that Eric Broadley designed and built the first single seater Lola, the front-engined Formula Junior Mk3 in 1960. Although no match for the Lotus 18 and the Cooper T52 results were promising enough to see the creation the following year of the first rear-engined Lola, the Mk3. Once again the Mk3 played second fiddle to the Lotus 20 and Cooper T56. The Mk5 and Mk5a followed in successive years and claimed a number of wins in the Formula, notably the supporting race to the 1963 Monaco GP when Richard Attwood, driving for the Midland Racing Partnership, was victorious. There were no more F Junior Lolas as the class was replaced with Formula 3 in 1964.

Four years after it was established, Lola really started to flourish when Reg Parnell commissioned a Formula 1 design for his Bowmaker Finance-backed team in 1962.
The Mk4 cars were raced initially by John Surtees and Roy Salvadori. Buoyed by qualifying on pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort and victory in the non-championship International 2000 Guineas race at Mallory Park, Surtees finished second in the British and German Grands Prix and fourth in the 1962 World Championship.

This enormous on-track achievement was followed by a partnership with the Ford Motor Company, which resulted in the 4.2-litre Ford V8-powered Lola Mk6 GT. The Mk6 took Lola to Le Mans for the first time in 1963 – having been driven there on the road from Lola’s new factory in Slough. Impressed by this Ford contracted Eric Broadley to develop the Mk6 and directly from this sprung the Ford GT40 series which dominated sports car racing until the end of the decade, winning the French 24 hour classic from 1966 to 1969.

During the mid-sixties, Broadley’s latest sports car thinking resulted in the legendary T70 series of brawny V8-engined machines which first emerged in 1965 and immediately set the pace at home and overseas. Armed with an open Mk2 Spyder version, John Surtees won the first Can-Am Championship in 1966. Roger Penske knew a good thing when he saw one and was soon campaigning the later Mk3B (the closed coupe version) in long distance events. Driven by Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons, the Penske Lola won the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours, proving the design’s reliability. 

Other notable T70 victories include Denny Hulme at the TT, the Players and Martini Trophies and Frank Gardner with the Brands Hatch and Mallory Park Guards Trophies. Other noted T70 winners included Jo Bonnier, Brian Redman, David Piper, Trevor Taylor and Paul Hawkins. Cars for USAC championship racing followed. The first was the T80 which Al Unser took to 9th in 1965. The following year its successor, the T90, won the 1966 Indianapolis 500 race driven by 1962 Formula One World Champion Graham Hill and in 1967 Al Unser would gain another second. Lola’s first ‘big-banger’ T140 Formula 5000/Formula A single-seater, its suspension derived from the T70 sportscar, entered the fray in 1968.

During the mid-sixties Lola built a number of customer Formula 2 cars chalking up several victories, notably for John Surtees who ran a works supported team for himself and David Hobbs using the T100 design in 1967 and 1968. BMW also commissioned Lola to build a F2 chassis to take their the radical radial-headed „Apfelbeck“ 1600cc engines, sadly drivers Jo Siffert and Hubert Hahne found the German engines weren’t as competitive as the Cosworth FVAs which powered most of their rivals.

Lola also entered the Formula 3 scene in the mid-sixties winning a number of races in Europe. A number of young drivers made their name in the F3 Lolas including Nigel Mansell, Arie Luyendijk and Guy Edwards. Lola returned to F3 in 2003 and immediately began to win races, in 2006 the B06/30 is dominated the Recaro German F3 series having won 15 of the 20 rounds in the series. 

Lola moved to its current Huntingdon base at the end of 1970, where Formula 5000 continued to be a specialty. Following Australian Frank Gardner’s development work with the F2-based T300 prototype in 1971, Lola’s T330 set new standards of design in 1972 and T332 evolutions of the car, entered by US Lola importer Carl Haas, won a hat-trick of SCCA/USAC titles from 1974-1976 in the brilliant hands of Briton Brian Redman. Bob Evans also won the Rothmans European title in 1972 in a T332. Going back to Eric Broadley’s sports car roots, Lola had also set new parameters of excellence in the new 2-litre class, his open monocoque chassied T210 having taken northern rival Derek Bennett’s Chevron concern, which was still using spaceframe coupes, by surprise in 1970. European agent Jo Bonnier, a Swiss-based Swedish veteran, won the drivers’ title. Austrian Helmut Marko won it in 1971 with its successor the T212, helping Lola to the manufacturer’s crown.

The ultra-successful and extremely attractive Lola T290 family of cars (and the 3-litre T280 series, powered by Formula 1 Cosworth DFV engines) are hallowed as classics of production racing car design. Rightly so, since Eric Broadley and Bob Marston were joined on the design team by youngsters Patrick Head and John Barnard, whose genius went on to span Formula 1 World Championships and Indycar racing, and continues to leave an indelible mark on motor sport

Specific history of this car:

The offered Lola T290 was driven throughout 1972 by the Italian driver Antonio Zadra. He raced at most of the European 2-litre Championship races, as well as the Targa Florio under the entry of Scuderia Brescia Corse. We also believe that it raced at the 1973 Monza event driven by Mario Casoni.

• 9.4.1972 Trophée Paul Ricard, Le Castellet, Antonio Zadra
• 23.4.1972 Tofeo Ignazio Giunti, Vallelunga, Antonio Zadra
• 25.4.1972 1000 Chiometri di Monza, Antonio Zadra / Giovanni Pierobon
• 21.5.1972 Targa Florio, Sicily, Antonio Zadra / Enrico Pesolini
• 4.6.1972 Grand Prix de Dijon Prenois, Antonio Zadra
• 9.7.1972 14th Circuit of Vila Real, Enrico Pasolini
• 6.8.1972 Circuit Misano, Italy, Mario Casoni

At the Targa the car won it’s class and was 4th overall.

The car then spent its later life in private hands in Italy: The previous owners are all documented among them was also the well known Rosso Corsa Museum in Northern Italy. Before the car has been purchased by the current owner it has been used in hillclimbs with a Cosworth 1600 BDA engine. Today, after a lengthy restoration in the UK, the car is fitted with a fresh and correct 2-litre Cosworth Chevy Vega engine. The Vega engine was developed by Cosworth and used by both Lola and Chevron works cars to replace the outdated Cosworth Ford FVC that most teams used in period. During the restoration the following works have been carried out:

• Monocoque totally restored including new panels and rivets etc.
• Rear sub-frame/engine bay re-jigged and re-painted, including replacement of some tubes that were slightly damaged.
• Cosworth Chevy Vega engine fully rebuilt by Swindon Racing Engines. They actually worked on these engines in period. Engine has been approved by Masters series to run in their World Sportscar Masters series as well as Classic Le Mans.
• Hewland FG gearbox rebuilt with new internals.
• New FIA approved fuel tanks in sill and behind seat.
• Complete new body parts fitted to car.
• New suspension and rose joints all round.
• New brakes or rebuilt and new parts fitted, including new discs all round..
• New fuel, oil and water lines.
• New electrical system and wiring loom

Since the restoration the car has covered only one race and is now presented for sale in excellent, race prepared condition throughout, ready for competitive racing in 2010. The Lola T290-series is today eligible for events as the Masters series, CER, Orwell Supersports as well as Le Mans Classic.

We are very glad to present this fantastic and fully documented Lola T290 for sale. It is for sure one of the most sought-after 2-litre sports prototypes and in the right hands a potential front-runner and race winner.