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 design was its use of standard, mass produced components in combination with a minimal number of specialized aluminium castings to create a power unit and transmission suitable for a high performance sports car: These three items were unique to the Elan (although the engine was subsequently used widely in other vehicles). The 1,558 cc "Lotus TwinCam" engine was based on the Ford Kent Pre-Crossflow four-cylinder 1,498 cc engine, with a Harry Mundy-designed two-valve alloy chain-driven twin-cam head. The rights to this design was later purchased by Ford, which renamed it the "Lotus-Ford Twin Cam". It would go on to be