CarBrandLogos archive · Lotus · 1976

LotusLotus Esprit

Giugiaro's folded paper made real, and then driven into the sea by James Bond.

Photo: Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Lotus history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Lotus Esprit, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1998 Lotus Esprit GT3 at Beaumanor Hall - mick

Origins

Giorgetto Giugiaro built a show car for Lotus in 1972 on a stretched Europa chassis, in the sharply creased, flat-planed style he was working in at the time and which became known as the folded paper school. Lotus liked it enough to productionise it, and the Esprit reached customers in 1976 with the company's own backbone chassis and a fibreglass body, the mid-mounted engine sitting longitudinally behind the cabin.

1998 Lotus Esprit GT3 at Beaumanor Hall - mick · Mick from Northamptonshire, England · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

Early cars were a problem. The 2.0-litre slant-four made respectable power for its size but the car looked far faster than it was, and build quality was patchy. What fixed the reputation was the Turbo Esprit of 1980, which added a turbocharger, a substantially revised chassis, and the performance the shape had been promising for four years.

1995 Lotus Esprit S4s exfordy · Brian Snelson from Hockley, Essex, England · CC BY 2.0

1991 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE , rear left at Greenwich 2018

In production

By then the Esprit had already become the most recognisable Lotus ever made, thanks to The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, in which a white Esprit S1 drives off a jetty and converts into a submarine. It returned in For Your Eyes Only, and for a generation the car and the film were inseparable.

1991 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE , rear left at Greenwich 2018 · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

Legacy

Peter Stevens softened the creases in 1987 and Julian Thomson rounded the shape again in 1993, so that late cars look almost unrelated to early ones despite sharing their architecture. From 1996 Lotus fitted a twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V8 of its own design, which finally gave the car the engine its looks deserved, arguably a decade too late. Production ended in 2004 after 10,675 cars and 28 years, an extraordinarily long run for a company of that size.

At a glance