Colin Chapman: Inside the Innovator by Karl Ludvigsen

Motorsports engineer didn’t win friends – but could influence people

Karl Ludvigsen is the ideal person to write a biography of Colin Chapman, because he’s an engineer and a writer and he knew the man well through his own involvement in motorsports. But at the end of a 400-page book, lavish with detail and illustration, you’re not sure if Ludvigsen liked his subject or not.

Chapman was the kind of man to inspire ambivalent feelings. Capable of immense charm and an engineer with visionary and revolutionary ideas, many still common today, Chapman also had an air of unscrupulousness, of sailing close to the wind. Colleagues and rivals respected him but were they fond of him? In many cases, no. 

The respect is only likely to deepen, though, with this book. Ludvigsen eschews a chronological approach for a chapters on engineering themes, which detail Chapman’s progress on the many fronts. If this structure sometimes leaves you thumbing back to find out what was happening in parallel, then it has the merit of making clear the thought and innovation that Chapman brought to his cars.

• Colin Chapman: Inside the Innovator by Karl Ludvigsen, Haynes Publishing, £35, ISBN 1 84425 413 2