[Video] This F1 Lotus 43 has an H16 engine! | GRR
The Lotus 43 may not have had the most illustrious of careers, but who cares, really, when you remember it has a rather unconventional engine set-up… Forget flat-sixes, V8s or W12s, the Lotus 43 used an H16 engine!
The H16 configuration is made up of two flat-eight engines stacked one on top of the other, each with a separate crankshaft. They’re complicated to maintain and rare, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from its spirited run up the Goodwood hillclimb.
Driven by none other than Jim Clark in period, the Lotus 43 was hampered somewhat by its comparatively heavy and unreliable 3.0-litre BRM P75 H16 engine and won just one race, the 1966 United States Grand Prix. But the 43 wasn’t all bad. When it was retired at the end of the season, elements of its Lotus 38 IndyCar-derived chassis lived on in its 1967 successor, the more successful Cosworth DFV-powered Lotus 49, including the use of the engine as a stressed member.
Piloted by Classic Team Lotus Manager Chris Dinnage, who was a period mechanic, including for Ayrton Senna, watch the iconic yellow and green machine wind up the Sussex hillclimb, a glorious picture of classic British motorsport.