Lola Cars was a brand of the Lola Group, combining former rowing boat manufacturer Lola Aylings and Lola Composites, which specialised in carbon fibre production. Broadley began with small front-engined sports cars, then expanded into Formula Junior, Formula 3, Formula 2 and Formula 1 cars.
Broadley designed the Ford V8-powered Lola Mk.6 coupé. Ford paid Broadley to put his company on hold for two years and merge his ideas with Roy Lunn's work, giving rise to the Ford GT40. Initial work was done at the Lola works at Bromley before moving to a factory on the Slough Trading Estate. After a year Broadley released himself from the contract and resumed independent development, retaining the Slough factory. He then built the Lola T70 and its successors — the T16x and T22x families — which competed successfully in the World Championship for Makes and the CanAm series until 1973.
In the late 1960s the SCCA's Formula A series evolved into Formula 5000, and Lola entered that market as well. After initial competition with McLaren, Team Surtees and Chevron, Lola came to dominate the later years of the series and won five consecutive Can-Am championships when the CanAm was revived using Formula 5000 cars as a base.
Lola resisted making a works Formula One entry for many years, preferring to construct cars on behalf of other entrants.
Lola made its first Formula One foray in 1962, supplying Lola Mk4 cars to Reg Parnell's Bowmaker-Yeoman Racing Team, with John Surtees and Roy Salvadori as drivers. Surtees claimed pole position in the car's first World Championship race, though Championship Grand Prix wins eluded the team. After Bowmaker's withdrawal, Parnell ran the cars privately; privateer Bob Anderson took the Mk4's last victory in the non-Championship 1963 Rome Grand Prix.
In 1967 Lola assisted Honda and John Surtees with the design of their F1 car. Honda's overweight chassis was replaced by a 1966 Lola Indianapolis monocoque — the Lola T90 — fitted with Honda power. The resultant Honda RA300, informally called the "Hondola" by the press, won the 1967 Italian Grand Prix.
Towards the end of his career, Graham Hill established his own team backed by the Embassy cigarette brand. After an unsuccessful 1973 with a customer Shadow, the team commissioned Lola to build the T370, largely based on Formula 5000 cars of the time. Andy Smallman developed the T370 into the Hill GH1 in 1975, but the team's first in-house design, the Hill GH2, remained unraced when Hill, Tony Brise, Smallman and other team personnel were killed in an air crash in November 1975.
The Haas Lola F1 programme was funded by Beatrice Foods and run by Teddy Mayer. The car was designed mostly by Neil Oatley. Alan Jones was brought out of retirement to drive towards the end of the 1985 season, with Patrick Tambay joining in a second car for 1986. A works Ford turbocharged engine was promised but did not materialise until 1986; Hart four-cylinder units were used in the interim. The team folded after the 1986 season with most of its assets sold to Bernie Ecclestone.
Starting from a Cosworth-powered car based on Lola's F3000 technologies, the French Larrousse & Calmels team built a steady reputation in normally aspirated F1 from 1987. They attracted Lamborghini V12 power for 1989 and scored good results with Éric Bernard and Aguri Suzuki. Due to irregularities with the team's 1990 F1 entry — the cars were entered as Larrousses but were in fact Lolas — the team lost all their Constructors' Championship points for that year.
The Scuderia Italia programme used Lola chassis powered by customer Ferrari engines in 1993. Michele Alboreto and Luca Badoer struggled to qualify for races. Badoer finished seventh in the 1993 San Marino Grand Prix, a race of high attrition, for the best Lola result of the season. The team withdrew from F1 before the final two races and partly merged with Minardi for 1994.
Lola had originally intended to enter Formula One in 1998, but pressure from main sponsor MasterCard caused the team to debut one year early. The cars had never been tested in a wind tunnel when they arrived in Australia, which at that stage in F1 development was considered unthinkable. The results were disastrous — the cars were no faster than Lola's Formula 3000 machinery. After one race the sponsors pulled out; the team arrived for the second race in Brazil but the cars did not turn a wheel. Shortly afterwards the entire Lola Car Company went into receivership, and was saved only by a cash rescue package from Martin Birrane, who acquired it in 1997.
On 22 April 2009 Lola announced evaluation of a project to compete in the FIA Formula One World Championship. The company lodged an entry for the 2010 season but on 17 June abandoned its plans after failing to secure a place on the initial entry list. Lawrence Stroll's attempt to acquire the Lola name for use in the 2019 season also failed.
Lola built chassis for the Indianapolis 500 as early as the 1960s. Graham Hill won the 1966 Indianapolis 500 in a Lola chassis; Jackie Stewart raced a four-wheel drive Lola there; and Al Unser won the 1978 Indianapolis 500 in a modified Lola chassis.
Lola made a full attack on the American open-wheel market from the mid-1980s, beginning in 1983 with Mario Andretti driving a Lola for the new Newman/Haas Racing. Lola progressively pushed March down to one team for the 1990 CART season and out of the series altogether by 1991. Arie Luyendyk won the 1990 Indianapolis 500 in a Lola. Reynard entered CART in 1994 and eventually displaced Lola from the market; by 1998 only the backmarker Davis Racing was running Lola chassis. However, when Penske Racing abandoned its proprietary chassis in 1999, it elected to run Lolas for the rest of that season. By 2001 the field was evenly split between Lola and Reynard. Reynard's financial troubles and the exodus of top teams to the Indy Racing League in 2002–03 left Lola as the only manufacturer building new chassis for the Champ Car series. For the 2007 season, Champ Car switched to the spec Panoz DP01 chassis. Lola also produced the spec chassis for the CART Indy Lights developmental series from 1993 to 2001.
After limited F1 success in the 1960s, Lola turned its attention partly to Formula Two, where it became the works team for BMW. When Formula Two was replaced by Formula 3000 in 1985, Lola made a false start with a car based on its larger Indycar chassis, returning in 1986 with a bespoke F3000 design. Lola enjoyed significant success for several years competing with Ralt and Reynard.
In 1996 the International Formula 3000 Championship became a one-make series and the FIA awarded Lola the contract to build the Lola T96/50 chassis for all competitors. The contract was renewed in 1999 (Lola B99/50) and again in 2002 (Lola B02/50) before International F3000 was replaced by GP2 and Lola lost the new-chassis bid. Formula Nippon also ran a Lola-spec series from 2003 onwards.
Lola won the largest-ever single-seater contract in 2005, supplying 50 identical Zytek V8-powered A1 Grand Prix cars for the A1 Grand Prix series. The cars were leased to national franchisees and were approximately at the F3000 level of technology.
Lola introduced the T600/T610 range for IMSA GTP racing in the early 1980s, fitted with Cosworth, Mazda and Chevrolet engines as well as the novel Polimotor, built using composite materials. Later Group C and GTP cars were built specifically for manufacturer programmes, including the Nissan Group C entries and the Chevrolet Corvette GTP programme.
From the late 1990s, Lola produced a range of sports cars for Le Mans-style racing, beginning with the B98/10 and the B2K/10. The Lola B05/40 — also known as the MG-Lola EX264/265 — took class honours at Le Mans in 2005 and 2006 with Ray Mallock Limited, and earned several class wins in the American Le Mans Series with Intersport Racing, including a second-place overall finish in the 2006 12 Hours of Sebring. A dedicated LMP675 car was built for MG in 2001, the MG-Lola EX257, powered by a two-litre AER turbocharged engine; it was also entered by private teams as the Lola B01/60.
Lola was building a B11/40 to comply with new 2011 LMP2 regulations when on 16 May 2012 it was reported that Lola Cars was entering financial administration. Multimatic, a subsequent owner of Lola assets, supplied two Lola B12/80 LMP2 chassis to Mazda for IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition in 2014–2016.
Lola Cars International ceased trading on 5 October 2012 after a period in bankruptcy administration; administrator CCW Recovery Solutions was unable to find a suitable buyer. On 16 October 2012, Multimatic Inc. and The Carl A. Haas Automotive Company acquired assets of Lola Cars and obtained a licence to use the Lola Cars name and intellectual property.
In late 2021 Till Bechtolsheimer bid for Lola and completed the purchase in June 2022. The assets acquired included the brand and trademarks, intellectual property and the Lola Technical Centre with its wind tunnel. Bechtolsheimer drove a Lola for the first time in November 2022 — a 1958 Mk1 at Harris Hill Raceway. In October 2024 Lola acquired Paceteq, an automotive data technology and software company, to accelerate development after entering Formula E.
In March 2024 it was announced Lola would return to single-seater racing in the 2024–25 Formula E season as a powertrain supplier in a technical partnership with Yamaha. Lola–Yamaha secured Abt as its first powertrain customer, with the team entering as Lola Yamaha Abt Formula E Team with Lucas di Grassi and Zane Maloney as the driver pairing. In November 2024 Lola took over Abt's Formula E entrants' licence, with Abt continuing to run the team operationally. The team won its first podium at the Miami ePrix, with di Grassi finishing second in the team's first five races. Di Grassi also scored points at the Shanghai ePrix, the Tokyo ePrix and the London ePrix during the debut season. At the Berlin ePrix, the team raced a special Superman livery following a collaboration with DC.
At Lola's founding, cars were numbered in order of construction and prefixed Mark (Mk1 through Mk6). In 1964 the designation changed to Type (T), with the first digits indicating car type and the final digit denoting a variant. From 1986 the scheme was refined so that the first two post-T digits indicated the year of original design and the next two indicated category. In 1998 the T prefix was replaced by B in honour of owner Martin Birrane, while the numbering logic remained the same. Under this scheme the final two digits denote category: /00 Champ Car, /10 Group C/LMP1, /20 Indy Lights, /30 Formula One/Formula Three, /40 LMP2, /50 Formula 3000/Formula Nippon, /60 LMP675/LMP1 Coupé, /70 Daytona Prototypes, /80 LMP2 Coupés, /90 Sports 2000.
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