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 Europa S Europa S amounted to 456 cars. Lotus stopped production of the Europa SE in early 2010 due to new emission standards. Only 48 cars were built thereby making it the rarest production road car ever built by Lotus. Reviews of the Europa S were not in line with those for its sister models, the Elise and the Exige, "The Sunday Times" noted that while introducing a lower-revving engine (a turbocharged General Motors 1998 cc, four-cylinder) creates a more comfortable level of sound, the performance is noticeably different from the higher-revving Toyota engines, and with a heavier body shell, the performance