A superb and rare photo of Jaap Luyendijk in action with his magnificent Lotus Seven during the 1958 Springbok International Sportscar race which was ridden on May 3, 1958 in South Africa. Luyendijk not only won the race, he also set the fastest lap.

Jaap Luyendijk was the very talented father of Arie Luyendijk, winner of the Indy 500 ( Indianapolis 500 miles race) in 1992 and 1997.

The Lotus Seven was a small, simple, lightweight two-seater open-top sports car produced by Lotus Cars (initially called Lotus Engineering) between 1957 and 1972. It was designed by Lotus founder Colin Chapman and has been considered the embodiment of the Lotus philosophy of performance through low weight and simplicity. The original model was highly successful with more than 2,500 cars sold, due to its attraction as a road legal car that could be used for clubman racing. After Lotus ended production of the Seven, Caterham bought the rights to it, and today make both kits and fully assembled cars. The Lotus Seven was launched in 1957, after the Lotus Eleven was in limited production. The Seven name was left over, due to a model that was abandoned by Lotus; a car that would have seen Lotus entering Formula Two with a Riley-engined single-seater in 1952 or 1953. However, the car was completed around Chapman's chassis as a sports car by its backers and christened the Clairmonte Special. Based on Chapman's first series-produced Lotus 6, the Seven was powered by a 40 bhp (30 kW; 41 PS) Ford Side-valve 1,172 cc engine. It was mainly for lower budget club racing on short tracks (750 motor club). The Lotus Seven Series 2 (S2) followed in 1960, and the Series 3 (S3) in 1968. In 1970, Lotus radically changed the shape of the car to create the slightly more conventional sized Series 4 (S4), with a squarer fibreglass shell replacing most of the aluminium bodywork. It also offered some "luxuries" as standard, such as an internal heater matrix. The S4 model was not widely welcomed, and Lotus sold few cars. The British tax system of the time (Purchase Tax) meant the car could be supplied as a kit (known as "completely knocked down" or CKD) without attracting the tax surcharge that would apply if sold in assembled form. Tax rules specified assembly instructions could not be included, but in a typical Chapman-inspired piece of lateral thinking, there was no rule covering the inclusion of disassembly instructions. Hence all the enthusiast had to do was to follow these in reverse. Having joined the EEC on 1 January 1973, the UK had to abolish Purchase Tax and adopt VAT instead. VAT does not allow for concessions such as "CKD", so the tax advantage of the kit-built Lotus Seven came to an end. (Note that VAT does allow for variable rating and even zero-rating" of certain goods and services; but the Government still opted not to indulge the kit-builder). In 1973, Lotus decided to shed fully its "British tax system"-inspired kit car image and concentrate on limited series motor racing cars. As part of this plan, it sold the rights to the Seven to its only remaining agents Caterham Cars. After a brief period producing the Series 4, including assembly of the last "kits" supplied by Lotus, Caterham introduced their version of the Series 3, and have been manufacturing and refining this car ever since as the Caterham Seven. Since the design of the Lotus Seven is so simple, over 160 companies have offered replicas or Seven-type cars over the years. Such cars are often referred to as "sevenesque" or simply a "seven" or "se7en". Sometimes they are also called clubmans.

Some examples are:

* McGregor Motorsport Ltd (New Zealand) Lotus 7 replica kits and manufacturers

* Marc Nordon Racing Vortx RT, RT+ and RT Super

* Luego Sports Cars Velocity and V8 Viento in UK

* Almac a kit car manufacturer in New Zealand

* BWE Locust, Hornet, Grasshopper

* Caterham owns the rights to reproduce the Lotus Super Seven

* Dax Cars ltd

* Deman Motorsport

* Westfield Sportscars produces several models

* PRB Clubman - manufactured Peter R Bladewell in Strathfield, Sydney Australia.

* Stalker V6 Clubman by Brunton Automotive

* Raptor by Tornado Sports Cars

* Donkervoort from Netherlands with Audi-Turbo-Engines

* Höckmayr KFZ-Technik (HKT) from Germany also with Audi-Turbo-Engines

* Hauser from Switzerland with BMW engines

* Tiger Z100, Tiger R6, Tiger B6 & Tiger Cat E1 from Tiger Racing Ltd

* MAC #1

* MK Indy from MK Engineering (using Ford Sierra parts)

* Mitsuoka Zero 1 from Toyama, Japan

* ESTfield from RaceTech (using Lada parts)

* Esther

* Several models from Robin Hood Engineering Ltd

* Dala7 (a taller and wider design using Volvo parts)

* Rotus, originally built with components from Japan and a Mazda rotary engine

* Gregory[citation needed]

* Superformance S1 Roadster

* Leitch Super Sprint, Leitch Industries, Invercargill, New Zealand

* Fraser Clubman from Fraser Cars Ltd

* Vindicator Sprint and the four seat Vindicator Family by Vindicator Cars

* Irmscher 7

* Elfin Sports Cars, Australian manufacturer of the Elfin MS8 Clubman (V8 powered), Type 3 Clubman and Elfin T5 Clubman.

* Lucalia Clubman, Lucalia Partnerships, Tasmania, Australia; mostly Japanese mechanicals (inline 4)

* Super Martin from France

* Pegasus Automobile from Germany.

* FM Westfield from Flyin' Miata (A Westfield Sportscars SEi using a Miata donor.)

* Birkin S3, Lotus 7 replica

* Cobra Cars produces the Garbí in Spain with the Yamaha R-1 180hp engine.

The Lotus car firm was formed as Lotus Engineering Ltd. by engineer Colin Chapman, a graduate of University College, London, in 1952. The first factory was in old stables behind the Railway Hotel in Hornsey. Team Lotus, which was split off from Lotus Engineering in 1954, was active and competitive in Formula One racing from 1958 to 1994. The Lotus Group of Companies was formed in 1959. This was made up of Lotus Cars Limited and Lotus Components Limited which focussed on road car and customer competition car production respectively. Lotus Components Limited became Lotus Racing Limited in 1971 but the newly renamed entity ceased operation in the same year. The company moved to a purpose built factory at Cheshunt in 1959 and since 1966 the company has occupied a modern factory and road test facility at Hethel, near Wymondham. This site is the former RAF Hethel base and the test track uses sections of the old runway. Lotus built tens of thousands of successful racing and road cars and won the Formula One World Championship seven times. The company also acts as an engineering consultancy, providing engineering development—particularly of suspension—for other car manufacturers. The company also acts as an engineering consultancy, providing engineering development—particularly of suspension—for other car manufacturers.

The company encouraged its customers to race its cars, and itself entered Formula One as a team in 1958. A Lotus Formula One car driven by Stirling Moss won the marque's first Grand Prix in 1960 at Monaco in a Lotus 18 entered by privateer Rob Walker. Major success came in 1963 with the Lotus 25, which—with Jim Clark driving—won Lotus its first F1 World Constructors Championship. Clark's untimely death — he crashed a Formula Two Lotus 48 in April 1968 after his rear tyre failed in a turn in Hockenheim — was a severe blow to the team and to Formula One. He was the dominant driver in the dominant car and remains an inseparable part of Lotus' early years. That year's championship was won by Clark's teammate, Graham Hill. Lotus is credited with making the mid-engined layout popular for Indycars, developing the first monocoque Formula 1 chassis, and the integration of the engine and transaxle as chassis components. Lotus was also among the pioneers in Formula 1 in adding wings and shaping the undersurface of the car to create downforce, as well as the first to move radiators to the sides in the car to aid in aerodynamic performance, and inventing active suspension. Even after Chapman's death, until the late 1980s, Lotus continued to be a major player in Formula 1. Ayrton Senna drove for the team from 1985 to 1987, winning twice in each year and achieving 17 pole positions. However, by the company's last Formula 1 race in 1994, the cars were no longer competitive. Lotus won a total of 79 Grand Prix races. During his lifetime Chapman saw Lotus beat Ferrari as the first team to achieve 50 Grand Prix victories, despite Ferrari having won their first nine years sooner.

Lotus won the Formula One world championship title for drivers and manufacturers no less then 6 times. In 1963 (Jim Clark); 1965 (Jim Clark); 1968 (Graham Hill); 1970 (Jochen Rindt); 1972 (Emerson Fittipaldi); 1973 (manufacturers title alone) and in 1978 (Mario Andretti).

This is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a wonderful era of Lotus automotive history in a wonderful way. This is your rare chance to own this photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 12" (ca. 20 x 30 cm).  It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.

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