For the first season of the CanAm championship (1966), the Lola T70 spider was the car to have. Lolas won five out of six races that year, and four out of the five winning Lolas were powered by Chevrolet V8s. The only other winning make of car in 1966 was the Chaparral 2E which won the fourth round of the 1966 CanAm series at Laguna Seca.
John Surtees won 3 races in his Lola Chevrolet T70, and in doing so became champion. Dan Gurney won the second round at Bridgehampton in his Lola T70 Ford and Mark Donohue won the third round at Mosport, Ontario in his Penske prepared Lola T70 Chevrolet. He was a lucky winner in that he was one of the few front runners to avoid being caught up in a first corner pile-up, which badly damaged John Surtees Lola putting him out of the race. Donohue went around the outside of the accident and emerged in the lead, which he kept until the end of the race.
One of the reasons Mark Donohue put forward for his relative lack of success in the 1966 season was lubrication problems with the large capacity "Big Block" Chevy V8 in this car. Penske and Donohue felt they would gain an "unfair advantage" (also the name of his biography from which I gathered much of the information on this model) by running a bigger and hence more powerful engine than the rest of the field, most of whom had smaller Ford and Chevrolet V8s. Unfortunately, the larger engine had an inadequate oil circulation system which meant the engine was starved of oil when cornering hard, a problem which often resulted in engine failure and consequent retirement in many races in 1966.
GMP make this model of Mark Donohue's 1966 Lola T70. I'm not sure which race version it is meant to represent, but I'm pretty sure it is not the Mosport winner after comparing it to a photo in my "CanAm" reference book. It is very similar however, and the blue paintwork with yellow highlights (Team Penskes regular colours) looks excellent. GMP Lola T70s are not the last word in 1:18th scale detail (they lack opening doors and front bodywork, have unexceptional interior detailing and an average amount of engine detail) but overall look right and are after all models of one of the best looking racing cars ever. Hence this model rates 7/10 marks from me.
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