When UK-based Lola's founder, Eric Broadley, decided that he wanted to build a sports car to compete in CIA's nearly-limitless "Group 6" class, he originally decided to build a Ford-powered racer. In fact, the original Mk. VI GT that he introduced in 1963 featured a monocoque chassis and was powered by a Fairlane V8. Previously, Lola had specialized exclusively in single-seat and small-displacement sports cars, but by the time that the Fairlane-powered, Mk. VI had been conceived, Ford took notice from Detroit, and soon Broadley would become involved in the original GT40 project.
Broadley didn't work with Ford on the GT40 for very long, however, as Broadley himself had concluded, based on the Detroit briefings, that too many compromises had been made to the GT40 in its development process to allow it to be fully successful at the race track. Following his work on the GT40, Broadley and Lola resumed concentrating on and building small cars, platforms with which the automaker was more familiar. Ford and Shelby's GT40 would go on to win its own motorsport acclaims, but Eric Broadley still refused to give up on his vision of building a large-displacement sports car.
The second time that Broadley had attempted to build a large-V8 endurance car, he concentrated on the American racing scene, trying desperately to penetrate CIA's limitless "Group 7" category. This time around, however, Broadley capitalized on the fact that CIA's Group 7 regulations were ever-tightening, suffocating drivers' ability to build race cars in their own backyards. As this increasingly became the case, there was also an increasing demand for customer-ordered sports cars. One of the first of these was McLaren, as Bruce McLaren himself had commissioned Elva to produce his M1, Group 7 car. Foreseeing that customer-ordered sports cars would be on the rise, Eric Broadley followed the motoring trend with the Lola T70, which was introduced in 1965.
The T70's monocoque chassis was an engineering landmark, as it contained a mixture of steel and aluminum for maximum strength. Also, the monocoque chassis was designed to accept any American V8, and the suspension, a rather conventional setup, consisted of double-wishbones with coil springs over dampers. The front brakes were also placed strategically, in order to allow sufficient amounts of cool air to reach the discs, and the car was topped-off with a fiberglass body that fulfilled the Group 7 racing class' only requirement, that each car have an open-top (Spyder) body.
John Surtees, a 1964 F1 World Champion, was one of the first drivers to try the Spyder version of Lola's T70. Surtees was also the first to show that Chevy's small block V8 was the most successful powerplant to ever reside within the T70's "walls," as the small block V8 itself evolved from 5 to 5.9 liters, and produced an astounding 550bhp, enough to carry F1 World Champion, Surtees to immediate success. For the 1966 season, several chassis mods were made to the T70 to form the "Mk. II" version of Lola's Chev-powered bobsled, and the Mk. II T70 would take Surtees to endurance-racing fame, winning three out of six rounds of the newly-formed, Can-Am challenge, Surtees himself being crowned champion by the end of the season.
The biggest challenge for Broadley and his Chev-powered, Lola T70 Spyder, which at this point had become a road-racing hit, was entering the "Group 4" category. The racing class required that each car have a roof and windscreen installed, which meant that the Lola T70 Spyder would now need an all-new body design. With the help of Tony Southgate and an available wind tunnel, Broadley was able to develop the highly-effective, coupe body that would come to form the Mk. 3 T70. Drag and lift had always been of primary concern with the T70, but thanks to the Mk. 3's new rear tail, the T70 coupe actually produced a considerable amount of downforce.
Chevy's small block V8 had, at this point, became the powerplant of choice in the Lola T70, though Aston Martin, who at the time was developing a twin-cam V8, was apparently interested in using their engine in the T70. An Aston Martin V8-powered T70 had been built and was even driven, but the engine was still under development. Consequently, the Aston Martin, twin-cam V8 was as underpowered at it was unreliable, and unlike the Chevy-powered T70 Spyder that had brought John Surtees to endurance racing prominence, the Aston Martin version actually caused the Lola T70 coupe to retire early from LeMans, a race track defeat that stood in brilliant contrast to Surtees' stunning victory in the Can-Am circuit.
The Lola T70 is not a race car whose name is thrown around as much as the legendary road-racers of the Ford-Shelby union, but it's equally-important, especially in light of the fact that it opened the doors for Chev performance in the professional world of grueling, endurance motor racing.
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