Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman CBE RDI (19 May 1928 – 16 December 1982) was an English design engineer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry, and founder of the sports car company Lotus Cars.

Chapman founded Lotus in 1952 and initially ran Lotus in his spare time, assisted by a group of enthusiasts. His knowledge of the latest aeronautical engineering techniques would prove vital towards achieving the major automotive technical advances for which he is remembered. Chapman's design philosophy focused on cars with light weight and fine handling instead of bulking up on horsepower and spring rates, which he famously summarised as "Adding power makes you faster on the straights. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere."

Team Lotus won seven Formula One Constructors' titles, six Drivers' Championships, and the Indianapolis 500 in the United States, between 1962 and 1978 under his direction. The production side of Lotus Cars has built tens of thousands of relatively affordable, cutting edge sports cars. Lotus is one of but a handful of English performance car builders still in business after the industrial decline of the 1970s.

Chapman suffered a fatal heart attack in 1982, aged 54.

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on 19 May 1928 in Richmond, Surrey, and brought up at 44 Beech Drive, on the border of Muswell Hill in London N2. His father ran The Railway Hotel on Tottenham Lane next to Hornsey Railway Station. Chapman attended the Stationers' Company's School in Mayfield Road.

Chapman studied structural engineering at University College London, joining the University of London Air Squadron and learning to fly. He left UCL without a degree in 1948, resitting his final mathematics paper in 1949 and obtaining his degree a year late.

Chapman briefly joined the Royal Air Force in 1948, being offered a permanent commission but turning this down in favour of a swift return to civilian life. After a couple of false starts, Chapman joined the British Aluminium company, using his civil engineering skills to attempt to sell aluminium as a viable structural material for buildings.^{[citation needed]}

In 1948, Chapman designed the Mk1, a modified Austin 7, which he entered privately into local racing events. He named the car "Lotus"; he never confirmed the reason, but one of several theories is that it was after his then-girlfriend (later wife) Hazel, whom he nicknamed "Lotus blossom". With the prize money, he developed the Lotus Mk2. Around this time, Chapman began to show his ability to think of ways to become more competitive while remaining within the rules. One early car had a 6 port head with 4 exhaust and two inlet ports. Chapman realised that better flow characteristics (and therefore more power) could be achieved with an 8 port head, but lacking the resources to have one made, he reversed the port functions and de-siamesed the old inlet ports. With appropriate manifolds and a new camshaft, his engine outclassed the opposition until the rules were changed to outlaw the specific changes he had made. With continuing success on through the Lotus 6, he began to sell kits of these cars. Over 100 were sold through 1956. It was with the Lotus 7 in 1957 that things really took off, and indeed Caterham Cars still manufacture a version of that car today – the Caterham 7; there have been over 90 different Lotus 7 clones, replicas and derivatives offered to the public by a variety of makers.