Ron Hickman Ron Hickman Ronald Price Hickman OBE (21 October 1932 – 17 February 2011) was a South African-born, Jersey-based car designer and inventor who designed the original Lotus Elan, the Lotus Elan +2 and the Lotus Europa, as well as the Black & Decker Workmate. Hickman was born in Greytown, Natal, South Africa, where he worked as a courthouse clerk after leaving high school. He moved to London in the 1950s where he was employed by a music publisher. From 1954 Hickman worked for the Ford Motor Company at Dagenham first as a clay modeller and later he helped to style
Lotus Elan of the Elan followed a entirely traditional approach for sports cars of the time - front engine, rear wheel drive - its design included novel ideas that found their way into the designs of other manufacturers' vehicles. Examples include: This generation of the two-seater Elan was famously driven by the character Emma Peel in the 1960s British television series "The Avengers". The reference to a car accident in the Beatles song A Day in the Life was apocryphally based on Tara Browne's fatal accident in his Lotus Elan. Famous Lotus Elan owners and drivers, past & present, include: Despite the