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 thinking. The front used lightweight pressed steel upper and lower wishbones with a clever coil-over spring-damper arrangement, all connected to the wheels using off-the-shelf front uprights, ball joints and trunnions. The steering gear was solid-mounted rack and pinion using Triumph Herald components. The rear suspension was a heavily modified version of the Chapman strut, originally developed for Chapman's earlier Formula racing car designs and used in the Lotus Elan. In the Europa, the vertical "strut" element pivots on the wheel hub at its lower end and doesn't control wheel camber angle as-in earlier Lotus designs. Wheel location and alignment is