The Ultimate Loophole

Colin Chapman spent his entire career finding clever, and often deeply questionable, ways to bend the rules. He was a master of the loophole, a genius of the grey area, a man who read a regulation not to see what he was allowed to do, but to find out what he was not explicitly forbidden from doing. It is, then, perhaps the most fitting tribute to the man that his own death is the greatest and most suspicious loophole of his entire career.

A Mountain of Trouble

By 1982, Chapman was in serious trouble. He had become deeply entangled in the spectacular business failure of the American car maker, John DeLorean.

The British government had given DeLorean a colossal pile of taxpayers' money to build his new gull-winged sports car in Northern Ireland. A huge chunk of that money, around £23 million, was then funnelled to a Panamanian front company, which was supposed to be paying Lotus for their engineering work. From there, a significant portion of it simply vanished.

The authorities were closing in. The FBI was involved, and Chapman was facing the grim prospect of a long prison sentence for his role in the affair. The Belfast judges later said that had he stood trial, he would have received a sentence of at least ten years. His loyal finance director, Fred Bushell, was arrested and would eventually serve time. But he remained famously silent about where the money had actually gone. Nevertheless, Chapman was cornered.

A Convenient and Tidy Death

And then, with a sense of timing that was either incredibly fortunate or brilliantly planned, he died. The official cause of death on December 16, 1982, was a heart attack, which was surprising, as he had only recently passed a full medical for his pilot’s licence. But it is the circumstances of his death and its immediate aftermath that have fuelled suspicion for decades. His star drivers, who were in America, called to say they were flying over for the funeral, only to be told by the family that it had already happened. He was buried with a haste that struck many as unusual.

The plot, of course, thickened. It transpired that very few people ever actually saw the body: officially, only his wife, Hazel, and the doctor who signed the death certificate. There was no independent inquiry and no autopsy. It was a very quick, very private end for a very public figure who was in a great deal of legal trouble.

The Clues and Whispers

The situation was made stranger by a series of peculiar clues that emerged over the years. The wife of the local cemetery caretaker later claimed that the date of Chapman's death appeared to have been altered in the parish records. She also said that Chapman's widow, Hazel, had once told her that the doctor who signed the death certificate had "disappeared into thin air" shortly afterwards.

Then there was the matter of his widow, Hazel, who suddenly developed a passion for a month-long holiday in Brazil in 1983. This was a woman who hadn't flown for ten years, yet decided to take a long holiday in a country that, conveniently, had no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom.

The press, naturally, seized upon the irresistible theory: Colin Chapman, the ultimate rule-bender, had faked his own death, had plastic surgery, and was now living a life of luxury in South America on the missing millions. It was a story so audacious and so perfectly in character that it was almost believable.

The Perfect Conspiracy?

Is the conspiracy true? The evidence is purely circumstantial. The FBI, for what it's worth, officially believed he was dead and never placed him on their wanted list. But the doubts remain because the story is just so perfectly Chapman. He was a genius who lived his life in the grey areas of the rulebook. It is, perhaps, the most fitting tribute to the master of lightness that his final act was to leave behind a story so full of mystery, intrigue, and gloriously unanswered questions.