Retro

Lotus only built 894 S1s, but the Esprit became one of the longest-lived designs of all time

Bond’s Lotus

LET’S SAY you’re a technology billionaire who’s big in space exploration, satellites and energy, with almost the means – and perhaps the will – to take over the world. You’re looking to buy a car, but heck, you already have your own car company. What to buy?

In 2013, Spacex/tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk plonked down £612,000 ($1.05m) to buy ‘Wet Nellie’, the white Lotus Esprit from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. It must amuse Musk that this car doesn’t actually have wheels and can only be driven underwater.

The Lotus Esprit had its genesis in 1970 as project M70, successor to the mid-engined Lotus Europa (1966-’75). Key goals were to modernise the Europa’s quirky styling and create more occupant space. Giorgetto Giugiaro, who had left Ghia in 1968 to found Italdesign, was personally commissioned by Lotus’s Colin Chapman. With shades of Giugiaro’s earlier Maserati Bora and concurrent Maserati Boomerang concept, the Esprit prototype was shown at the 1972 Turin motorshow.

Giugiaro’s first design for fibreglass required long production engineering, the process also allowing time for Lotus’s new, all-alloy ‘907’ four-cylinder engine to be developed, and a sufficiently strong transaxle gearbox to be found. The production prototype was completed in December 1974, though it was another 10 months until the public launch at the 1975 Paris Motor Show – and customer deliveries did not begin until mid-1976.

With its light weight (990kg) perfectly distributed, the Esprit was hailed for its handling, but the four-potter’s performance was hollow and the cockpit harsh and noisy. The first customer deliveries in June 1976 were not only eight months late, they were around 35 percent above the launch price quoted in October 1975 – and were often mechanically unreliable.

Much of that, however, was forgiven after July 1977, thanks to Bond … James Bond.

In August 1978, the Esprit S2 introduced more refinement along with styling and mechanical changes, progressing through a stroked 2.2-litre and Turbo (1980), an S3 (1981), a new generation (with body designed by Peter Stevens) in 1988 and Lotus’s own 3.5-litre twin-turbo V8 (1996). Esprit production ended in 2004 and in those 28 years, Lotus built only 10,675 Esprits – of those, a mere 894 being the Series 1.