Remember the Monterey Car Week that occurred over the last weekend? Well it turns out that there are all sorts of other events within the Monterey Car Week event. One such event was the 2016 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, an American way to say classic car racing meet-up. The reunion was held at the Laguna Seca and one of the cars competing at the event was the Lotus 79. The Lotus 79 was designed by the late Colin Chapman. Indeed the Lotus 79 was very advanced for the time, it was the first F1 car to take advantage of ground effect aerodynamics. When the car was first raced in anger in 1978 it sparked a period of utter dominance for the Lotus F1 team wining both the constructors and drivers championship for Mario Andretti. Ground effect aerodynamics effectively turn the underside of the car into an inverted wing. By 1982 the FIA implemented an outright ban of the aero based technology. Today all F1 cars must have a 10mm skid block that runs down the centre of the car to limit the low ride-height ground effect cars require. The Lotus 79 was powered by a 3.0-litre, naturally aspirated Cosworth V8, the engine generated 480bhp and 353Nm of torque, a modern day BMW M5 is more powerful. But the Lotus 79 weighed 610kg which gave it a power to weight ratio of 160bhp per litre meaning the current M5 is still a bit of a lard-arse by comparison. In addition, we are sure you will agree, the 79 sounds much better.