Why Seventies sharpness is the must-have look of 2017. Wedge styling legend Oliver Winterbottom rates the Delorean DMC-12, Lotus Esprit S2, Lancia Montecarlo and Maserati Khamsin
This quartet pushed their own angular ideologies for a post-organic automotive design future. Former Jaguar, Lotus and TVR designer Oliver Winterbottom gives his acute opinion as he evaluates them line by razor-edged line
Sentiment is rarely the best lens through which to view anything but, if your formative years were the Seventies, angles meant everything. It was a decade of wild and ever more geometric show cars resplendent in highlighter pen hues; of wedgeshaped exotica with only token nods to Highway Code adherence; of aspirational production cars styled by men whose names were hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. And while the whim of fashion may have rendered them prematurely passé, outlines having taken a turn for the amorphous in the Eighties, it’s a different story in the here and now. These days, a sense of romantic fascination surrounds the cars gathered here. You might wonder what links together a Delorean DMC-12, a Lotus Esprit S2, a Lancia Montecarlo and a Maserati Khamsin, but there is commonality. What unites them is that they wowed the public in period because they had style. As such, they remain in our collective consciousness as copperbottomed, blue- chip classics.
And who better to pass comment – and judgement – on these cars than Oliver Winterbottom? The ex-jaguar, Lotus and TVR man pushed the ‘folded paper’ envelope for all it was worth in the Seventies and had the inside track on one of the cars featured herein. Never one for calling a spade a hand-held gardening implement, his thoughts on our quartet are genuinely enlightening. We would expect nothing less.
By all accounts, Colin Chapman had one foot in the times and the other in a world of his own. As we all know by rote, Lotus’s talismanic leader was a visionary; a rule-breaker and a risk-taker with scant regard for convention. He was forever straddling the line between the possible and the permissible. You could also label him an opportunist; someone who rarely missed a trick. The story behind how and why the Lotus Esprit came into being is a case in point.
Few cars have ever enjoyed such longevity as this much-loved junior supercar. Entering production in Series 1 form in 1976 with the own-brand 2.0-litre 907 four-banger, the last car rolled off the production line in 2004 – by which time it had morphed into a twinturbocharged V8 bruiser. What tends to be forgotten, however, is that the Esprit had Italian roots.
The 1972 Turin Motor Show witnessed the arrival of a low- slung, mid- engined sports car, complete with speech marks. The Silver Lotus was an Italdesign concept car, and one that had relatively little input from Norfolk, save for the provision of a Lotus Europa Twin Cam chassis, which was stretched by 11cm and given wider front and rear tracks. This one- off show queen borrowed several cues from the Turin firm’s earlier Maserati Boomerang, a concept car that was as extravagantly out-there as only the Latin styling houses could muster at the dawn of the Seventies. Nevertheless, in this instance Giorgetto Giugiaro created an outline that was more real world than flight of fantasy.
This one- off prototype impressed just about everyone – not least Chapman, who soon struck a deal with ‘Il Maestro’ whereby The Silver Lotus would form the basis for a fully-fledged production model. A replacement for the Europa had been on the cards for several years, but this time it would be a more aspirational model; a rival for the Continental elite in terms of looks, performance and image. What’s more, Lotus pulled it off.
That said, by the time the production-ready Esprit (codenamed Kiwi) was ushered in at the October 1975 Paris Motor Show, some of the earlier show car’s purity had been lost along the way. It was still a looker – and how – but, as is so often the case, the conceptcar-to- showroom transition had its casualties. For starters, the low-pressure injection moulding construction technique resulted in a prominent waistline where the two body halves were joined together. The steep rake of the windscreen was also reduced by 3º because it otherwise wouldn’t comply with US roll- over legislation. The fully opening rear end was also dropped. Nevertheless, Lotus’s bold new baby still looked strikingly modern.
The original Esprit subsequently gained a displacement hike to 2.2 litres and several stablemates, not least the Turbo edition from
1981- on with its Giugiaro-penned bodykit that served to heighten the wedge look. The Peter Stevens restyle for 1987 breathed new life into the Esprit, while Julian Thompson successfully gave it a nip and tuck for the 1993 revamp. The insertion of the Lotus-made, twin-turbo V8 three years later ensured that the Esprit went out on a high.
But nothing can top the original. This was the plucky British challenger that became inextricably linked with James Bond following its appearance in The Spy Who Loved Me. It was once a wall-poster staple, which is why it resonates still. What’s more, it has aged remarkably well. The Esprit S2 pictured here, resplendent in metallic gold, was the 1978 Birmingham Motor Show car. Photos really don’t lend it a sense of scale. By modern standards, the Lotus appears positively tiny, but the cab-forward outline is beautifully proportioned. There is little in the way of tinsel, and the use of proprietary parts such as the Morris Marina door-handles and Rover SD1 taillights do not detract.
In 2008 Giugiaro recalled, ‘I remember the friction between Chapman and I when he wanted to put the Italdesign name on the car and I suggested Giugiaro Design. He told me that “the designer is the person who puts together the package and does the engineering. That’s me. You’re just the stylist”.’ Regardless of who did what, this meeting of two great minds resulted in a car hasn’t lost the power to captivate.
Thanks to: Esprit owner Nigel Scott and Club Lotus (clublotus.co.uk)
Maserati is a marque with as many mis- steps as milestones in its back catalogue. The past 40 years in particular have witnessed the release of several cars unbefitting of the name; the sort of fodder that only served to dent its credibility. If you categorically had to pinpoint the last truly great Tridentbearer, the Maserati Khamsin has to be up there as a candidate. Rarely has there been a more beautiful Gran Turismo, its outline penned by Bertone’s Marcello Gandini at his creative peak. The car’s dart-like profile looks as striking now as it did following its big reveal in concept form (minus Maserati badges) at the 1972 Turin Motor Show. It suggests aggression and power but also exhilaration. It’s pure, sharp- edged, kinetic sculpture.
Replacing the fabulous Ghibli was always going to be a tough gig, but in many ways Maserati didn’t try to. From the outset, the Khamsin was meant to be a more subtle and refined car. After all,
Maserati already had a high-performance stud in its stable in the form of the mid- engined Bora. Unlike the Ghibli, the Khamsin had allround independent suspension and an altogether more sumptuous cabin, even if it was a bit of a stretch to label it a 2+2. Nevertheless, while it may have been softer in character, the bloodline remained unsullied. It retained the same large- displacement, low- stressed 4930cc V8, each cylinder block being topped by a pair of chaindriven camshafts, with four gurgling Weber carburettors nestling in the vee. While the claimed top speed of 171mph was a bit optimistic, it certainly looked as though it would live up to the billing.
This being a Maserati made during Citroën’s custodianship, some of the factory- claimed 316bhp was lost to the hydraulic circuit that powered the speed- sensitive steering, brakes, clutch, pop-up headlights and even the seat adjusters, but it was still a powerful car with torque to match (a thumping 354lb ft at 4000rpm). Unfortunately, the timing of the car’s launch as a production model at the 1973 Paris Salon was inauspicious. It coincided with a fuel crisis, and demand for thirsty GT cars had fallen off a cliff by the time manufacture commenced a year later.
It also didn’t help that Citroën chose to axe its Italian subsidiary in 1975, with Alejandro de Tomaso acquiring the marque from the receivers with government assistance. He would go on to chase volume thereafter but the Khamsin survived the chop until 1983, by which time 421 had been made. What’s more, it still looked striking rather than dated, unlike some of its contemporaries. There had been relatively few styling updates during its lifetime too, the most obvious being the additional slats that were inserted into the nose for cooling purposes on post-1976 cars.
Nevertheless, it is only relatively recently that the Khamsin has emerged from the shadows of its more famous stablemates. It is a much-misunderstood machine and an unusual car to drive thanks in part to the Citroën influences, yet is hugely enjoyable once you are familiar with its foibles. However, more than anything, the visuals remain the big draw. Gandini may have been a genius, but he wasn’t above cut ’n’ pasting previous designs for a new paymaster. That wasn’t the case here, though – even if the glazed tail and location of the fuel filler cap in the right C-pillar louvre had been trialled before on the Lamborghini Espada. There really was no mistaking the Khamsin for any other car in its class.
What’s more, it isn’t pretty in the conventional sense. It has quirks. The asymmetrical bonnet vents are a case in point. They’re in place to provide a visual break; to stop the Khamsin from appearing to be all bonnet. US- spec Khamsins had impact bumpers and repositioned rear light clusters that rather blighted the picture, but there really isn’t a line wrong on European-market cars. What’s more, since its release it’s hard to think of a car styled by Gandini that has looked better. Bertone as a design house never topped it, that’s for sure. It may not be widely upheld as a landmark Maserati, but’s that only because it takes some people longer to cotton on than others.
Thanks to: Khamsin owner Jeremy Wilson; Andy Heywood of Mcgrath Maserati (mcgrathmaserati.co.uk)