LONDON.- The Lotus collection of Olav Glasius, a world renowned collector and lifetime Lotus fan will be sold on Friday the 29th June 2012 at the
Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale and is expected to realise in excess of £1.5million.
As a young motor racing enthusiast watching the legendary Jim Clark dominate the 1963 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in a Lotus 25, Olav Glasius became a lifelong fan of this legendary British marque. As a Dutch textile industrialist, Olav’s lifetime of work and passion for race cars has allowed him to accumulate probably the world’s largest privately owned collection of Lotus road and racing cars.
Having assembled one of the finest-quality collections of Lotus products, Olav Glasius has now hung up his racing overalls and entrusted Bonhams with the sale of his superb collection “so that others can enjoy these wonderful machines”.
The Glasius Lotus Collection will be offered for sale at the 2012 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where, most suitably, the 2012 event is to highlight the 60th anniversary year of the Lotus marque. The collection comprises 24 vehicles, covering a huge span of Lotus innovation and achievement from 1953 to the present day.
In addition to a hugely impressive array of rare and truly historic Lotus racing cars ranging from Mark VI through Marks VIII and IX, one of the now extremely rare and immensely desirable Team Lotus works Le Mans veteran Type 11s, to an original and unspoiled Formula Junior Lotus 27 and ex-Formula 1/InterContinental Lotus Type 18 – the Collection also includes a fine array of beautifully restored and maintained ultra-low mileage road-going super cars from a Lotus Elite Series II to a Lotus Esprit Turbo. Capping the Glasius Lotus Collection is a trio of prototype/one-off concept cars of the type becoming increasingly popular with organisers of international Concours d’Elegance and design-excellence events.
The sale of the Glasius Lotus Collection will offer other enthusiasts the opportunity to acquire rare and highly desirable Lotus cars, as well as providing a window into the lifetime work of Colin Chapman, Lotus Cars’ creator, mastermind, and design genius.
The Glasius Lotus Collection cars demonstrate many of the most significant design innovations wrought by Colin Chapman and the dedicated team of gifted specialist he built around himself from the 1950s to the 1980s. Under his leadership the Lotus marque always punched far above its weight, taking the fight on-circuit to overwhelm many of racing history’s most revered factory names, and to re-write the record books.
Doug Nye, Bonhams Motoring Historian and author of some 70 books including several on the Lotus marque enthuses, “There are few teams that encapsulate the romance of the ‘little guys beating the big guys’ better than Team Lotus and Olav Glasius’s remarkable collection, which he has assembled with such love and painstaking care over so many years, truly embodies the essence of what Colin and his successors have been all about.”
James Knight, Group Motoring Director of Bonhams comments “We are both honoured and delighted to have been entrusted with the sale of Olav’s superb collection. The Lotus marque is hugely respected and boasts all the credentials you could wish for: an innovative and charismatic owner in Colin Chapman, one of the finest drivers the sport has ever known in Jim Clark, and manufacturer of sports and racing cars that could take on and beat the best the others could offer. We have enjoyed watching Olav successfully compete with his cars at historic racing events, including Goodwood, and it seems fitting that the collection will be offered for sale at the Festival of Speed where Lotus will be the event’s celebrated marque.”
