45 Years of Lotus Esprit
An English wedge took center stage at the 1975 Paris Motor Show. This wedge had wheels and came from a renowned British sports car builder. Starting with 150 hp, the power increased over time up to 354 hp in the last year of production. Unfortunately, the model remained without a true successor. Italdesign, the design house founded by Giorgetto Giugiaro, presented the basic shape of the Esprit as early as 1972, but it took another three years before it was ready for series production. 1975 – the BIC single-blade razor was invented, Microsoft was founded and the first microcomputers were built, David Beckham was born and, more importantly for car fans, the Lotus Esprit finally saw the light of day.
Esprit as a Bond vehicle
Whether these experiences changed the world is questionable, but it is undisputed that the Esprit became an automotive legend during its construction until 2003. The appearance in the film “James Bond 007 – The Spy Who Loved Me”, where the Lotus Esprit was transformed into a submarine, probably played a significant role in this. The wedge-shaped sports car was given this role as a movie car when a Lotus developer parked an Esprit without logos and lettering in front of the film company’s production office. There, the car was examined with interest and eventually tracked down to the Lotus headquarters to find out which vehicle it was and whether it could be obtained for the upcoming Bond film. The Esprit also reappeared in a more recent version in the follow-up film “For Your Eyes Only”.
From 150 to up to 354 hp
While the Esprit started out with a moderate 110 kW/150 ho from a four-cylinder engine, over the course of its nearly 30-year production run, output grew to as much as 260 kW/354 hp from a V8 biturbo engine. It all started with the Esprit S1, which used the aforementioned 150 hp, if the figures are to be believed, to accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in 6.8 seconds and to reach a topspeed of 137 mph. The Lotus Esprit S1 was the first of its kind in the world. The car consistently followed Colin Chapman’s “light is right” philosophy and weighed only about 900 kilograms.
From 1981 also with turbocharger
In 1981, the first turbocharged engines were introduced in the Esprit, initially delivering 156 kW/212 hp and thus enabling a topspeed of 153 mph. The highlight of the four-cylinder turbocharged versions were certainly the S300 Sport, which produced 225 kW/306 hp, and the GT3, which now had 179 kW/244 hp. In order to keep the growing competition at bay, the company’s own V8 biturbo engine were introduced in 1996 and remained in the range until the end of production. Then it delivered 260 kW/354 hp. In the 1990s, Lotus competed with Esprit in the GT2 and GT1 categories of the FIA GT Championship.
No successor in sight
45 years later, the time seems more than ripe for the renaissance of the legend. In 2010, Lotus promised a new Esprit. Nothing ever came of that relaunch relaunch and some more promised new models, as then-CEO Dany Bahar was quicker with his promises and spending money than delivering tangible results. Today, Lotus is on its way to the electric age and seems to have finally stopped working on a new Esprit. Thus, it is all the more important to preserve the classic representatives of this type of sports car.
Images: Lotus
