Pilbeam Racing Designs is a British company which designs and constructs racing cars, based in the Lincolnshire town of Bourne. The company was founded in 1975 by Mike Pilbeam.
Previously Pilbeam worked in Formula One for several teams, having latterly been Chief Designer for BRM (also based in Bourne), producing the P201. An early project was the BRM P67 from 1964. Pilbeam also worked on the Lotus 7X Clubman's car. [1] He designed the LEC Formula One car for David Purley to race in 1977.
Pilbeam cars have been exceptionally successful in hillclimbing, dominating the 1980s and early 1990s; they were the choice of 17 British Hill Climb Championship winners between 1977 and 1997, [2] powering such drivers as Andy Priaulx and Roy Lane.
The company has also produced sportscars, initially working on the Pacific Racing BRM P301 project in 1997, then entering Le Mans in 2001 with a car of their own design; and has designed a number of touring cars for manufacturers such as Vauxhall and Honda. Pilbeam's main market these days is in LMP2 prototype racing. The only team that ran the MP93 LMP2, is Pierre Bruneau which took their MP93, with a Judd XV675 powerplant, to three podiums in the Le Mans Series in 2006. On 19 October 2006 an announcement was made stating that Pilbeam would be building a new MP93 for Embassy Racing.
Pilbeam also aided in the design of the Lotus Sport Exige, and currently builds cars for the VdeV Championship.
Mike Pilbeam is actively involved with the MSc Motorsport Engineering and Management at Cranfield University where he supports thesis projects and serves on the advisory panel for the Motorsport Masters.
Lola Cars International Ltd. was a British race car engineering company in operation from 1958 to 2012. The company was founded by Eric Broadley in Bromley, England, before moving to new premises in Slough, Buckinghamshire and finally Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and endured for more than fifty years to become one of the oldest and largest manufacturers of racing cars in the world. Lola Cars started by building small front-engined sports cars, and branched out into Formula Junior cars before diversifying into a wider range of sporting vehicles. Lola was acquired by Martin Birrane in 1998 after the unsuccessful MasterCard Lola attempt at Formula One.
British Racing Motors (BRM) was a British Formula One motor racing team. Founded in 1945 and based in the market town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, it participated from 1951 to 1977, competing in 197 grands prix and winning seventeen. BRM won the constructors' title in 1962 when its driver Graham Hill became world champion. In 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1971, BRM came second in the constructors' competition.
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