Some racing cars win championships. A rare few come to define an era. The Lola T70 did both, and after decades away, the real thing is back.
Lola Cars has confirmed a strictly limited run of the T70S, a faithful rebirth of its 1960s sports racer, built in two forms: the track-only T70S and the road-registered T70S GT. For anyone raised on the sound of a naturally aspirated V8 echoing off the banking, this matters. Before we get to the new car, it helps to understand why the original earned its reputation.
*Images sourced from https://lola-cars.co.uk/T70S
Where the T70 came from
Eric Broadley founded Lola in 1958, and by the mid-1960s the company had settled on a formula that was almost rude in its simplicity: build a light British chassis, sit a big American V8 behind the driver, and go racing. The T70 arrived in 1965 and did precisely that.
It worked straight away. John Surtees took the very first Can-Am championship in a T70 in 1966, and the car became the weapon of choice for privateers taking on Ford, Porsche and Ferrari, driven over the years by the likes of Surtees, Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti. The line evolved quickly, from the open Mk1 and Mk2 spyders into the Mk3 coupé and then the definitive Mk3B. It was a Mk3B that scored the T70’s most famous result: a one-two at the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours, Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons winning for Team Penske and beating the works Ford GT40s and Porsche 908s in the process.
More than 100 examples were built, and by Lola’s own reckoning the T70 racked up over 230 race wins across its career. It even had a film career, standing in for camera cars and racers in Steve McQueen’s 1971 epic Le Mans. That history is the whole point of the new car, because the 2026 T70S is a reboot of the Daytona-winning Mk3B specifically.
Kept alive by replicas, until now
Here is the part worth being precise about. After the original production run ended, and long before the company itself went into administration in 2012, the T70’s shape was kept alive by a small industry of specialist builders rather than by Lola. In the UK, Gardner Douglas of Grantham has offered its GD T70 since the early 2000s, and Broadley Automotive builds Mk3B-based cars so authentic they have been granted FIA Historic Technical Passports and race wheel-to-wheel with genuine period cars.
Those are fine machines, but they are tributes built by other hands. What makes the 2026 project different is simple: this is the first time the revived, official Lola, back under new ownership since 2022 and now racing in Formula E, has built the car itself, from its own archive drawings and high-resolution scans of the best surviving Mk3Bs.
The T70S GT: a race car with a number plate
The one most of us will fixate on is the GT, because it is road-legal and supplied UK-registered. It makes only modest concessions to real-world use. There are no screens, no traction control, no ABS and no power steering. What you do get is air conditioning, chunkier switchgear, somewhere to stow a set of radio headsets and a small boot for what Lola politely calls “modest luggage”.
Under the bodywork sits a 6.2-litre Chevrolet V8 producing 500bhp, mated to a six-speed Hewland manual that can be switched to a sequential mode for track use, a little like the gearbox in the Koenigsegg CC850. With a dry weight of just 890kg, that works out at 562bhp per tonne, which puts it in Lamborghini Revuelto territory. Lola quotes 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds and a 200mph top speed.
The bodywork is where the engineering gets genuinely interesting. Rather than carbon fibre, Lola has developed its own material, the Lola Natural Composite System, made from natural plant and basalt fibres with a renewable resin derived from sugar-cane processing waste. Lola says the result is stronger than glassfibre and more refined than carbon fibre, and that the manufacturing process cuts CO2 emissions by 54% against conventional methods. It is a clever piece of materials science, though it is worth keeping perspective: this is still a 500bhp V8 supercar, so the sustainability story sits in how the body is made, not in how the car is driven.
The T70S: the track-only version
Strip away the road-car niceties and you get the T70S proper. In place of the 6.2-litre engine sits a period-correct 5.0-litre small-block Chevrolet V8, and although it is smaller it is angrier, producing 530bhp. On an 860kg dry weight that gives 616bhp per tonne, good for 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds and a 203mph top speed, driving through a period-correct Hewland transaxle.
The detail that changes everything is the paperwork. Every T70S comes with an FIA Historic Technical Passport, the document that makes a car eligible for the best historic grids. In other words, you could take delivery and go door-to-door with genuine period machinery at events like the Goodwood Revival or Spa Classic, racing against the very GT40s and Porsche 908s the original once beat. That is a rare thing to be able to buy new.
How much, and how many
Just 16 cars will be built in total, split between the T70S and T70S GT, at Lola’s Silverstone base. Lola has not published an official price. What it has said is that the cost will sit near the value of the very best original T70s, which can reach around £750,000. The trade-off is a familiar one for continuation cars: you are paying period-car money for a car with zero miles and none of the fragility or provenance risk of a genuine 1960s racer, but you are not getting the history that comes with an original chassis.
The rival: Nichols N1A
If the Lola looks backwards with reverence, the Nichols N1A does something subtly different. It reimagines the era rather than recreating a specific car.
The name above the door carries real weight. Steve Nichols designed the McLaren MP4/4, the car that won 15 of its 16 races in 1988 in the hands of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and which is still regarded as one of the most dominant Formula 1 cars ever built. His N1A is a tribute to Bruce McLaren’s very first car, the M1A of 1964, a Group 7 sports racer from the series that became Can-Am. The company originally toyed with reviving the old Elva marque before choosing to build its identity around Nichols himself, with “N1A” nodding directly to that M1A.
Mechanically it chases the same ideal as the Lola: no turbos, no hybrid, no electronic safety net. A hand-built 7.0-litre V8, developed from a Chevrolet LS block by Langford Performance Engineering, drives the rear wheels through a six-speed manual. Power runs to around 700bhp in the latest cars, on a weight of roughly 900kg, so the performance is ferocious even if Nichols is coy about full figures. The first 15 cars are “Icon 88” editions, one for each of the MP4/4’s 1988 wins, with the wider run capped at 150 cars. Pricing sits around £540,000 including VAT.
Lola or Nichols? Two takes on the same idea
Set side by side, these two are less rivals than kindred spirits. Both weigh under a tonne. Both send a big, naturally aspirated V8 to the rear wheels through a manual gearbox. Both are built for drivers who want to feel connected to a car rather than managed by it, in an era when most fast cars are doing the opposite.
Where they part ways is intent. The Lola is a portal to a specific moment, an almost exact recreation of the Mk3B that beat the works teams at Daytona, complete with the FIA passport to go and prove it. The Nichols is a love letter to the same period, but built with a free hand and modern engineering rather than tied to an original blueprint. One lets you relive history; the other reinterprets it.
For a collector, the Lola’s rarity, 16 cars against the Nichols’s larger run, and its direct link to a real racing pedigree make it the more exclusive proposition. For a driver who cares only about the experience and wants to spend a little less, the Nichols makes a strong case. Neither is wrong. Both are proof that there is still a healthy appetite for cars built simply to be driven.
Thinking about a modern classic or a specialist performance car of your own? Browse the current collection at Redline Specialist Cars, or get in touch and we can help you track down something special.
