Lotus 38

The Lotus 38 was an open-wheel racing car built by Lotus for the Indianapolis 500. Designed by Colin Chapman and Len Terry as the team's 1965 entry, it evolved from the earlier Lotus 29 and Lotus 34 Indy cars but added a full monocoque tub chassis, and it was powered by a four-cam Ford V8 fuel injected engine mounted behind the driver. With Jim Clark at the wheel it won the 1965 Indianapolis 500, the first victory at the Brickyard for a rear-engined car, which effectively ended the era of the front-engined roadsters. Eight chassis were built, most for Team Lotus and several sold to other entrants including A. J. Foyt and Mario Andretti, and Lotus ran the design again in 1966 and 1967. Its offset suspension, with the body set asymmetrically between the wheels for oval racing, never caught on widely, but design elements later fed into the Lotus 49.