BTW, I don't mean to sound pretentious. I'm certainly not an expert on racing history and I'm confident that there are others in this forum who know more about racing than me. However, I was a big fan of Lotus in the late '60s and early '70s and I think that we tend to forget how influential Lotus was. Lotus either invented or significantly developed the monocoque chassis, mid-engine race car design, McPherson struts on the rear of cars (they should be called Chapman struts) and many other innovations. Almost every time that Lotus took the track against Ferrari or many of the other manufacturers of the time, it was a clear case of "David v. Goliath". And yet, Lotus won time and time again and, in the process, transformed open wheeled racing.

I also think that a "racing pedigree" is largely irrelevant in today's world. Jaguar, Bentley and Aston Martin all have incredible racing pedigrees, but it doesn't mean that the cars they manufacture today are ready to race, particularly in the case of Jaguar. Now that most cars are designed by committees and marketed by multinational corporations, it's increasingly unlikely that we'll ever see designs with the clarity of vision that epitomized some of the cars of the late 20th century. That's not entirely a bad thing because it means that we won't have to endure Edsels, Skodas, and Briklins.