A man of enormous personal charm, of chilling ruthlessness, as considerate and soft as soap one moment, as hard and cold as chilled steel for the following hour, a visionary, an engineer, a leader, a genius... Lotus founder Colin Chapman was a man of many parts, all of them fascinating and intriguing. In the 20th anniversary of his death, Journalist and historian Doug Nye pays tribute to Chapman and all his faces

"Unbelievable…", I heard myself gasping. I had just been told that it is twenty years since the death of Colin Chapman.

A jarring sensation ran through me like an electric shock, a jolt of deja vu. In the same room, on the same day, twenty years before I had experienced that identical reaction. Not, that time, to being reminded that this was the twentieth anniversary of Colin's death, but the odd manner in which I had heard the numbing news for the first time…and had gasped, as I was gasping now, "Unbelievable…" - nerve ends tingling, mind racing...

Nobody who was not around to follow motor racing during the period of Colin Chapman's supremacy with Team Lotus will quite be able to grasp the enormity of that shocking news. Today there simply is not the same breadth of admiration, affection, respect - nor of objective, wary, realization of imperfection - in our motor sporting celebrities. Neither is there any motor sporting celebrity who can today command the breadth of respect and appreciation that Colin Chapman had earned within his era.

I write this as a partial witness, a convinced enthusiast and supporter, but simultaneously, I know, as a never-uncritical, never-compliant journalist. What I am expressing now is just simple memory, as I remember it…that jolting, stunning, shocking morning.

Back then, the telephone had rung and I had answered it. To my surprise it was John Cooper - Colin's self-confessed "number one fan" while also having been his great rival, the man whose team had been the double-World Champion force that Colin had set out to topple with his Team Lotus. John was uncharacteristically quiet and concerned, his voice low and tight. "Doug…", he began "…look I don't quite know how to say this, but a bloke's just come into the garage here and said 'Sorry to hear about your mate…' - and I said 'What mate?' - and he said 'Colin Chapman, the Lotus man, I've just heard on the radio that he died last night, heart attack'. So I thought I'd call you to ask if you'd heard any such thing? It can't be true, can it? I mean he's no age at all. He can't have died, can he? It's not possible…".

"John, I've heard no such thing. Let me check and I'll call you back."

I then telephoned the Press Association, the first resort in those days of any journo seeking to verify a newsflash. "Yes - on the tapes right now - Colin Chapman, head of the Lotus Group of companies, implicated in the developing De Lorean inquiry, is confirmed dead".

As crisp and blunt as that.

I dialled John's number to call him back - and in the background I heard the news reconfirmed as lead item on BBC radio. Unbelievable, indeed...

Some years later, when compiling a profile book on the great Jim Clark, I wrote the following as its prologue: "Colin Chapman pored intently over photographs spilled chaotically across his desk at Ketteringham Hall. In his cavernous office there he had been, untypically, reminiscing about 'the old days' of Team Lotus. We had provided the photographs to prime his memory, hopefully to relax him, reining him down to the kind of intellectual speed which we mere mortals could match. He was always the most electric man I have ever known. Small wonder some of his lads nicknamed him 'The White Tornado'.

"Over curling shots of long-obsolescent Lotuses, he had been patiently explaining all kinds of semi-technical detail. Now we knew why that particular slot had been cut there, why this folded angle had been riveted onto that surface, why - between those two races - one particular pick-up point had been moved...

"As the hour which he had promised us stretched into two, then three, the crisp, clipped 'media' Colin Chapman - the hyper-dynamic millionaire tycoon - was submerged beneath the lifelong motor racing enthusiast within. We realised we were in good shape when he commanded, 'Stop all my calls...', and as the photographs sparked old memories so the anecdotes had begun to flow, and his old North London accent and phrasing had re-emerged. We laughed a lot that day. I would never claim to have known him at all well, but that afternoon was the closest we ever came.

"Only one call came through, Sue, his secretary, leaning around the door and clearing her throat apologetically to explain, 'I thought you would like to take this one; Mr Ecclestone is on the line...' Colin gave us such an exaggerated wink it would have done credit to Fagin, and chuckled, 'Ooh, 'scuse me, it's me Guv'nor,' before taking the call.

"Yes, he was that relaxed. And then he had moved another print aside and beneath it was a shot of Jim Clark lying back in the cockpit of one of their Lotuses, head tilted to one side, gazing attentively up at the man who had created those winning cars for him, Chapman himself.

"And our laughter subsided. It was over a decade since Jim had died behind the wheel of one such car. Colin gazed intently, silently, down at that picture, a half-smile on his handsome face. A question welled within me. I sensed this was not the time to ask it. That was not the kind of silence which anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would comfortably break.

"After so much discussion, so much hilarity, it seemed interminable. In fact I doubt it lasted more than ten seconds, but by the dynamic Chapman's standards that was an age. He was the one who broke the spell. He glanced up, caught my eye, and blinked as if startled awake from a brief daydream. Never one to betray private emotion, he spoke instantly, crisply - but quietly - his tight index finger tapping on the print. His simple, soft, words spoke volumes.

"'He was the finest man I ever knew. As a driver he was a complete genius...

"'And, do you know, I doubt if he ever fully realised it...' "

That was a memory of an untypical communion, on an untypical day. I suspect the key to it had been the presence of my veteran photographer colleague, Geoff Goddard. Colin knew quiet, prickly, uncompromising Geoff of old. He knew him as the photographer for 'Motor Racing' magazine in the 1950s who had cooled his heels at so many Lotus 'new model' launches, had never complained, and had always produced decent pictures, attracting decent publicity.

Geoff recalls: "Lotus cars were never ready when they told us they would be. We used to roll up at Colin's original Lotus works in the stables behind his dad's pub in Hornsey and they'd still be frantically bolting the car together, and sometimes even explaining we could only shoot it - say - from the front, because the back wasn't painted yet, things like that. We'd hang about with beer and tea and sandwiches - if we were lucky Lotus would be buying. But inevitably all those new car launches were in the depths of winter. If I had a tenner for the number of times we photographed new Lotuses at dusk or only by flash after having pitched-up there at 10 in the morning we'd have done very well. I vividly remember shooting the new 'Vanwall' shaped Lotus 16 by flash in falling snow…and 'Chunky' never changed, ever when things developed to a far grander scale…"

Before we left Ketteringham that interview day, Colin insisted he take us on a tour of Team Lotus's adjoining racing workshops. Striding into the gearbox section he opened the spring-return door by crashing into it with the upraised palm of his hand, without breaking his stride, head turned and still talking to us. "How you doin'?" he asked his man assembling a transaxle, as the guy turned to answer all he saw was the swinging door - Colin had already gone charging on to the next-door 'shop.

"Bugger me - The Old Man never waits for the answer…"

That's why they christened him 'The White Tornado' - all you'd often see of him was a fading swirl of dust. We smiled in sympathy, and panted after 'The White Tornado', 'The Old Man', 'Chunky', 'ACBC'…Colin Chapman.

To a surprisingly large degree, Colin was a true team partisan, as much as natural team leader. He just loved his team to be the best, in everything. He loved his blokes, his mechanics, to pull the best practical jokes, to make the biggest, loudest, acetylene bombs, to beat BRM or Cooper or especially Ferrari in any kind of contest...whether it was drinking beer, or wine, or eating pasta, or shellfish, or winning the crazy golf game, or bouncing highest on the Zandvoort beach trampolines, or winning the transporter race from Paris to the Osterreichring.

He liked his blokes to be the ones who would pull the most outrageous stroke at outwitting pestiferous Customs officers, or circuit gatemen, or self-important scrutineers. He liked them to pull the ritziest, horniest birds at Monte Carlo or Indy - as long as they didn't cramp his own style - he liked them to win the punch-up in a bar in Sao Paulo or Stuttgart...he just liked them to win, and he absolutely relished being perceived as the leader of the wiliest, the cleverest, the smartest, the most resourceful team of racers in being.

He would give each of his blokes, individually the biggest bollocking of their lives for being involved in any of the above, but it would usually end up with a twinkle in the eye - an unspoken "...you're a Lotus man, my son"...

He was a man of many parts, of enormous personal charm, of chilling ruthlessness, as considerate and soft as soap one moment, as hard and cold as chilled steel for the following hour. He was the man who easily ignored old established friendships when new, more profitable sirens beckoned. He was the man who would 'derive' engineering ideas from others naive enough to share them with him, and then claim full credit for their origination. Yet equally he proved himself time and time again as being the most personally accomplished broad-band original thinker in British engineering. And within his specialist field that meant, in practical terms, worldwide engineering.

He loved a challenge, he was the definition of A Racer, and when he once told me "Team Lotus was formed to go racing, and as far as I'm concerned that's our reason to exist - that's why if there's a non-Championship F1 race, no matter how minor, if we can service an entry in it…Team Lotus will be there…".

That's also why when urged to protest a rival competitor on numerous occasions his standard reaction was "No - if we can't beat them on the track there's no question of trying to beat them in a committee room. Let's wait for the next race - they'll know we're there!".

That was the sportsman talking.

He was vain, almost immaturely so. He'd been dogged by a propensity to pack on weight, which had earned him his unsympathetic nickname - 'Chunky' - which he truly detested. My old friend Andrew Ferguson was Team Lotus racing manager for many years, and he recalled how: "Colin had a unique method of dieting. If we were staying in a hotel he'd make a great display of joining us all at breakfast, but loudly ordering just a coffee - say - nothing to eat. And then without turning a hair he'd proceed to pick up a fork and say things like 'You don't want that bacon do you?' or 'You don't want that sausage?' and he'd eat a king-sized breakfast off all our plates…"

His relationship with Jimmy Clark had always been incredibly close. They were like brothers, Colin of course the senior. They'd share a hotel room together at races, not only did it simplify any 'de-brief', it also handily slashed expense - something which ranked high upon each man's priority list. But one time at Indy, Colin came down to breakfast and joined Andrew at a table. He seemed unusually subdued and touchy. Andrew: "Eventually I asked him, 'Something seems to be troubling you. What's the matter?' And he said 'It's bloody Clark - after I'd gone to bed last night the door to the room opened and he came in with a bird in tow. I made out I was asleep, and he was just about to get her into bed when she said 'What about him?', pointing at me, and Jimmy said, 'Och no - don't worry about that silly bugger, he never hears a thing when he's asleep'…".

What had really got to Colin was not the activity - but the fact that Jimmy, his pal, his superstar driver, had referred to him dismissively (what's more to some casual girlfriend) as "that silly bugger"!

Colin was also dismayed by Indy-sponsor Andy Granatelli's come-back rejoinder one memorable day when Colin was driving him through the Norfolk lanes near the Lotus factory at Hethel. As they rounded a blind turn between the dense hedgerows with overhanging trees, there ahead of them were a number of heavily-built men, clambering over a roadside stile, shotguns in hand.

Big Andy's perhaps conditioned response was instinctive and instant: "Jeezusss!" he squealed, trying to cram as much of his bulk as possible - as speedily as possible - into the car's passenger-side footwell.

Colin waved at the local pheasant shooters, roaring with laughter at 'Groticelli's discomfort. He explained who they were. Andy saw the funny side and giggled himself, before remarking "Ya know Colin - if I'd been wasted back there, you'd ha' been da guy who was wid Granatelli the day he got hit - you'd ha' been famous!".

That apparently really wiped the laughter off 'Chunky's face. To his intimates, Colin complained for days about what Granatelli had said - he was really stung by it. In his own mind - as indeed in reality - on his own account he was already famous.

As a racing car designer and constructor he was criticized for years for playing fast and loose with his drivers' safety. Lotus cars were fast but fragile. They broke chassis, suspensions, steering. When Cooper designer Owen 'Whiskers' Maddock said to his guv'nor, Charlie Cooper (John's father) "We ought to stress our chassis designs properly, do proper stress calculations first", Charlie gave him short shrift: "Nah whiskers. Chapman does all that and he's forever weldin' up 'is chassis when they break!".

There was truth in this. Innes Ireland recalled having his works Lotus 16 re-welded on the starting grid before one race - and then of accelerating out of Thillois corner towards the timing line and pits at Reims "…whereupon one front wheel just lazily began to topple inwards until it was leaning on the bodywork, trailing a plume of rubber smoke - the suspension had broken again…"

In practice for the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix, no less than Stirling Moss had a shattering high-speed accident when a wheel broke away from his Lotus 18 - the first rear-engined model - and almost simultaneously on the opposite side of the circuit, private owner/driver Mike Taylor was grievously injured when his 18 telescoped its way into the trackside woodland, its steering wheel having come off in his hands…

Later that year when Stirling was presented with a cake baked in the form of his Walker team Lotus 18 the first slice he cut was a wheel, which he presented to Colin Chapman. On the evening of the accidents at Spa, Mike Taylor's mechanic - no-nonsense bruiser Brit Pearce - had confronted 'Chunky', pinning him against a wall by his shirt-front and spitting "You bastard Chapman - you've probably killed my -------- driver!".

Come raceday, Team Lotus works driver Alan Stacey's Lotus 18 crashed at high speed, and he was killed. It seemed, however, that he had been struck in the face by a bird, probably losing consciousness and control…

Colin's Team Lotus career was punctuated by tragedy. In 1957 the popular budding American star, Herbert-Mackay Fraser had been killed in a works Lotus 11 at Reims. Then Stacey in the 18 at Spa - followed by Jim Clark himself in the Formula 2 Lotus 48 at Hockenheim in 1968, Mike Spence in the gas turbine Lotus 56 at Indy the following month, and in 1970 Jochen Rindt - in the Lotus 72 - at Monza. In 1978 - Monza again - the great Ronnie Peterson suffered severe injuries which with medical mishandling speedily proved fatal.

Make no mistake, Colin took each blow personally, most particularly Clark but also Spence…so soon after. But like all resilient racers he had the ability to put the hurt in an intellectual box which he could then close and bury deeply.

Then there were the business ethics by which he ran his growing car, and later boat and plastics companies - the component parts of his mushrooming Lotus Group. They were perhaps charitably described as 'obscurantist', less charitably as 'the ethics of an alley cat'. Although from a reasonably affluent middle-class family he had in effect set out with nothing, and made himself the wealthy engineer/businessman/tycoon that he became by his own talents, and capability, and entrepreneurial daring. But when early Lotus Elite road car customers complained to him that their cars leaked, and their feet got wet, he simply advised them "to drive in Wellington boots", and when US importer Jay Chamberlain complained that Lotus were selling cars direct to his clients - cutting him out of the loop - Colin not only left him to pick up the tab for curing horrendous production faults in the cars he was allowed to handle, but also left him out to dry as Chamberlain's creditors bankrupted him. And Jay had been quite a close friend.

And then there were Colin's men - his workforce, the mechanics, fitters, designers, administrators. In the companion Atlas F1 Nostalgia Forum I posted this the other day, comparing 'Old Man' Ferrari and A.C.B. Chapman:

"When asked about him, ACBC's men - almost to a man - will recall 'Cor what a terrible bloke, when I think what he did to me, and then there was the time when...unbelievable! BUT I WOULD GIVE MY RIGHT ARM FOR HIM...'.

"OMF's men - almost to a man - will recall 'Cor what a terrible bloke, when I think what he did to me, and then was the time when...unbelievable! BUT THAT'S HOW IT WAS IN ITALY...'.

"And this seems to me to be a crucial difference...closer to equality, a team, all in this together, with Chapman, but absolutely servant and master with the entirely autocratic Ferrari. Not that he (Ferrari) was incapable of being a generous and sympathetic master upon occasion..."

The same was also absolutely true of Colin Chapman. Perform for him, for his team, do your job well and he could - and would - reward one generously. He was a fantastic motivator of men, and he was absolutely superb at giving even very young and inexperienced new staff the confidence to perform at levels way above even their own expectations - no matter how precocious.

He was a great, enthusiastic, rampant, aggressive, almost flagrant private flyer. He cut corners, and broke what he regarded as petty rules and regulations whenever they offered the slightest inconvenience. He had a habit of taxiing his aircraft right into the hangar he had built for it at the Hethel factory. After a couple of misjudgements which saw his aeroplanes' nose cones expensively shattered on the far hangar wall, he ordered some of his men to bolt timber stop-chocks to the hangar floor, where the undercarriage main wheels would contact them while clearance still remained between nose and back wall. Next time he came confidently taxiing straight into the hangar - normally an absolute no-no in aviation terms - he struck the stop-chocks so hard that his aircraft's nose wheel leg collapsed and its tail fin shattered against the ceiling.

It was not, of course, his fault - and a rare old explosion ensued about aircraft not being built strong enough. Have a collision with 'The Old Man' as he drove recklessly around his factory site and it would inevitably be your fault - never his. His writ also extended, as far as he was concerned, out onto the country lanes for miles around Hethel and Ketteringham…and often into the city streets of nearby Norwich itself. ACBC was a law unto himself…perhaps the only law he ever recognized without objection?

But then there came the decline, the disintegration, the breakdown - not of personality, not of drive, nor dynamism but of (perhaps) the grasp of reality. For one thing Formula One had run beyond his abilities to do as much of it himself as he had for years - though always aided by superb lieutenants. For another the infliction of ever more irksome technical regulations dented his enthusiasm and relish for Formula One. For a third the trading environment of the late 1970s/early 1980s had been rugged for the specialist car and high-priced boat businesses. Then there's the fatal fourth, for he had progressively through the '70s been introduced to the lavish lifestyles of the super-rich and celebrated.

He found the glitz and glamour espoused by David Thieme of Essex Oil and particularly by John Z. DeLorean and his ilk rivetingly seductive. He had built his group over frenetically hard-working decades with the skilled financial stewardship of Finance Director Fred Bushell to keep Chapman and Lotus - generally - just on the legal side of the tightrope. When he saw DeLorean - almost the Hollywood designer-clone of a jut-jawed six-footer star of Detroit industry - parlay £70-odd million Pounds worth of backing out of a compliant, star struck, unbelievably naive British Labour Government for his half-baked performance car scheme, 'Chunky' wanted part of the action.

What's more he plainly believed he was entitled to part of that action. It was his due. Porsche had quoted DeLorean a development price for his car project which would have bought Group Lotus, in totality. Now Colin latched onto the prosthetic-jawed American and they arranged a deal under which both would profit personally from clandestine commission creamed-off from the project's Government funding. In fact Lotus R&D did a pretty amazing job of progressing the DeLorean car from an impracticable, unworkable paper project to a real, working - albeit still under-developed - production entity within an unbelievably brief period.

But after so many years of achievement, followed by the enviable sight of American opportunist John DeLorean clinching funding from his - Colin's - national Government, 'Chunky' seems to have concluded that a share of it should be his not merely by deceit, but by right. He felt he was entitled…and perhaps really did believe by that stage that he, truly, could walk on water…

As Mike Lawrence records in his fine new book ' Colin Chapman - Wayward Genius' (published by Breedon Books, ISBN 1-85983-278-4) - $17.67-million were paid to General Product Development Services Inc to commission Group Lotus to develop the DeLorean DMC-12 car. That money was split between DeLorean and Chapman, with Fred Bushell - 'Uncle Fred', the portly little accountant who had done so well in keeping 'Chunky' and Lotus afloat and free for so many years - drawing a small percentage from his Chairman's share.

The mediocre Labour Government had been toppled and replaced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives. The DeLorean scheme - or scam - was under increasing scrutiny. Forensic accountant Sir Kenneth Cork was placed in charge of its investigation.

On October 20, 1982, John Z. DeLorean was arrested in Los Angeles when buying bulk cocaine which he intended to sell at a profit to sustain his car company. It was an FBI sting, for which he willingly fell. Investigation post-arrest then uncovered the money paid to GPD, which seemed to be a shell company established in Switzerland by former Lotus wheeler-dealer/sometime sports car racer Jaroslav 'Jerry' Juhan and his wife. News media in both the UK and USA speculated openly that Chapman and DeLorean had conspired to defraud the British Government - and through it 'the taxpayer' - of that $17.67-million…using information provided by America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which revealed the existence of GPD.

Sir Kenneth Cork interviewed Colin, who denied any impropriety. As Mike Lawrence writes: "Cork described the interview as 'uphill work' and made an appointment to interview him again. Before a second interview could take place, Chapman flew himself to Paris on 15 December, to attend a meeting of the FIA. He flew himself home and then suffered a massive heart attack. A post mortem was performed on his body…"

On June 20, 1992, 'Uncle' Fred was sentenced to three years imprisonment and a fine of £2.25-million at Belfast Crown Court. In sentencing him Lord Justice Murray said that if other people named on the charge sheet with Bushell had stood in the dock - Chapman and DeLorean - they would have received at least 10 years imprisonment.

It was most unusual for a senior British judge to make such a declaration and it demonstrates the severity with which defrauding the UK Government was viewed.

There have been all sorts of rumours and theories expressed ever since that Colin Chapman's death was faked, and that he was enjoying a later life, basking on sun soaked beaches somewhere, perhaps, in South America. Many of us who knew him, more so those who worked for him, and his family who plainly loved him - warts and all - almost relish the notion this might be true. But there was a post mortem, and at his funeral this towering motor sporting personality was not handily cremated, he was buried, and he lies today in that rich Norfolk soil adjacent to his former empire - Ketteringham, Hethel… 'Lotusland'.

One former Lotus employee is convinced that Colin's vanity played a major role in his premature death - his battle to control his weight having persuaded him to take an unproven new South African crash-slimming medication about whose potentially catastrophic side effects at least one prominent medical practitioner had specifically warned him. There's another closely involved faction who remain adamant to this day that Colin was in fact murdered by Mafia contacts of the appalling DeLorean, who had invested in his motor company. Murderous injection of digitalis or simply of air into the circulatory system, creating an air embolism, were both rumoured.

Perhaps the demise of major league motor racing's most significant postwar engineering figure has yet to be fully explored. Regardless, Colin was gone - and his team was leaderless - his wife Hazel and children Sarah, Jane and Clive bereft - his colleagues and friends and fans, stunned beyond belief. The great British buccaneer was in his grave at just 56.

His old team had, in his lifetime, won 72 Grands Prix, six Formula One Drivers' World Championship titles and seven Formula One Constructors' titles. As Mike Lawrence rightly sums up "Colin left an astonishing legacy, but he also left behind him a mess and Fred Bushell had to pay the price for it…".

That was perhaps the real irony, the really pernicious legacy. We all knew that 'Uncle' Fred was probably the one man who had kept Colin out of jail all his life…and there he was, in the 1990s, in effect having to do Chapman's 'porridge' for him, to give the State the scapegoat perhaps that the politicians and civil servants really needed. Which in many ways, perhaps, was the unkindest cut of all.