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 Esprit GT1 in the 1997 season. Lotus Esprit GT1 The Lotus Esprit GT1 (codenamed type 114) was a sports racing car produced by Lotus Engineering, a subsidiary of Lotus Cars formed to develop racing cars to compete in the GT1 class racing. It competed in the BPR Global GT Series in the mid 1990s. The early 1990s was particularly difficult for Group Lotus, as the repercussions of global recession were severe for all sports car manufacturers. During 1992 the Lotus dealer franchise network contracted from 29 to 19 outlets, as production of the long-running Excel and recently-relaunched Elan M100 ended. Furthermore, by