Ron Hickman the 105E Ford Anglia. He became the director of Lotus Engineering in the 1960s, designing the first Lotus Europa as part of Lotus's GT40 project bid. He left Lotus in 1967. Hickman invented the wood-and-steel foldable Workmate bench after sawing through a piece of wood into a chair used as support, when making a wardrobe. His offer of a licence for the product he developed was rejected by several companies who could not see a large market for it, so Hickman sold the benches himself to professional builders at trade shows until Black & Decker saw the light in 1973
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