This was on the basis of its wheels, although not specifically due to the wobbly-web design. The car, as designed, used Lotus's typical 6-stud wheel at the rear but a 4-stud mounting at the front. The wheel rims were also wider at the rear, 6" vs. 5", with wider tyres of 5.50×13 rather than 4.50×13. As the rules for Le Man were still framed as a "sports car" endurance race, they required the carrying of a spare wheel. The 23 had such a spare, but obviously it could not be fitted to both ends of the car. The scrutineers rejected this and barred the car from competition. Matching 4-stud rear hubs were flown hurriedly from England, avoiding the incompatibility problem, but the scrutineers now objected that if 6 studs had been required before, 4 must be inadequately strong and still refused to allow the cars to compete. After this, Chapman replied "We shall never again race at Le Mans.", a promise that Lotus kept until 1997, long after Chapman's death in 1982. The following year's Can Am sports car, the Lotus 30, switched from wheel studs to centre-lock wheels. This was mostly due to the far greater torque of its large V8 engine, but it also avoided this situation re-occurring, as the 30 also carried a single spare wheel. A drawback to the use of a disc wheel, particularly for front wheels, is the lack of airflow through the wheels, which is important for cooling the brake discs. The rear wheels of single-seat racing cars are driven by driveshafts from the transaxle and the brakes are usually mounted inboard in any case, away from the wheels. Later Lotus designs, from the 26 onwards, used spoked wheels, although this was more about the shrinking diameter of racing tyres, especially fronts, rather than brake cooling. With an open-wheel racing car, any shrouding from the wheels was never a serious limitation. As for many articles made from Elektron alloy, corrosion of the magnesium was a problem for long-term service. Even though Lotus only used these wheels on its racing cars, not its road cars, they had a limited service lifetime. Lotus cars of the 1960s are still popular for historic racing, but these wheels are now no longer acceptable for competition scrutineering, no matter what their apparent condition. As the wheels are such a distinctive part of the car's appearance though, there are modern reproductions available.