Lola's sublimely beautiful T70 spyder sports-racer is historically significant as winner of the first ever Can-Am Championship.

It was designed and manufactured by Lola Cars Ltd, of Bromley, Kent, a relatively young company that had been building competition cars for only seven years prior to the T70's introduction in 1965.

From humble beginnings – the prototype Mark 1 sports car emerged from a garage behind the Broadley family's tailoring shop in Bromley in 1958 – Lola Cars quickly established a winning reputation and grew to become a major force in world motorsport.

Eric Broadley, his cousin Graham and Rob Rushbrook, at whose garage premises the first customer production versions were made, were the architects of the early success, which continued with a front-engined, single-seater Formula Junior, the Mk2.

Among Broadley's early projects was the Mk6 GT coupé, which had been designed to take advantage of readily available American V8 engines that offered the ideal combination of ...