’ It’ s not about creating something archaic or old. It’ s about adding the correct technology in the right places’
Lola’ s Executive Innovation Director, Matt Faulks, has clear goals about what he wants to achieve with the race and road-going T70s
‘ The road car was a little more of a challenge because the T70S GT, we didn’ t want to lose what a T70 was: Lola chassis, Chevrolet small block, Hewland gearbox. One of my biggest challenges was,“ Can I keep that recipe? How do you do that in a road car that’ s useful for people, that is roadable, you know, has a usability element, without losing the noise and the frequencies and the chatter the gearbox makes and all the things that make the car what it is?”
‘ The layout is the same in both cars. So the exhaust manifold position is the same. The top of the cylinder head is the same. The rocker cover position is the same. So you look at it, and you actually think,“ Yeah, this is actually super similar.”
‘ There is so much similarity. But there’ s some little modern bits around the place. So that was a little more complex and we were able to work with General Motors to find a suitable Chevrolet small block. What we’ ve really done is retain that Chevrolet small block, gone up a little bit in capacity, so 6.2 litres now. The FIA limit back in the day was five litres.’ So the racecar has to stick to that rule. In the road car, we don’ t have that FIA requirement.
‘ So it’ s a lot easier for us to... Yeah. Shall we say, find some more power with capacity. We’ ve gone down a little bit in rev limit, which gives us pretty much the same power. We’ re 30hp down in the road car and a little bit more torque, so we’ re about 30lb ft up in the road car.’
Power and performance aren’ t the only considerations required for a road car engine, though.‘ It’ s a modern production Chevrolet small block and we have taken various components from series production to better create a small block Chevy that we can run in the T70. You can’ t just take an existing road car engine because it’ s too tall, or something’ s in the wrong place, the bell housing pattern doesn’ t match … there’ s a myriad of things, but we’ ve been able to very carefully select some series production components which have got us a very road car-able engine. It idles, it cold starts well, it can drive at low rpm very well.’ A far cry from the racecar, then.‘ You don’ t need a man on standby to push you away!’
While the core of the engine is Chevrolet, Lola has had to create bespoke parts to make it its own.‘ Lola has developed its own sump, its own inlets and air filters and exhaust manifolds. It’ s packaging a modern small block V8 in place of a historic small block V8. And the front end of the engine is different, which is why Lola’ s had to develop its own front end accessory drive, too.’
’ It’ s not about creating something archaic or old. It’ s about adding the correct technology in the right places’
Autumn / Winter 2026 The Engine Rebuilder 47