‘I won my longstanding engineering battle with Chapman’
The Esprit’s original chief engineer, Mike Kimberley, provides a fascinating insight into the model’s development, production and incredible longevity
‘The Esprit project started off from the basis of replacing the Twin Cam Europa,’ says Mike Kimberley, who joined Lotus in 1969 as its vehicle engineering manager. He’d been responsible for putting the Twin Cam Europa into production, and the Esprit was his next project. ‘In those days, new world emissions, crash and crush regulations were being added, especially by the Americans and Japanese. We would have had to try to re-engineer the Twin Cam Europa and that would have meant starting again, which didn’t make any sense.’
At the time the company was in a transitional phase, changing from old models – Elan, Elan+2 and Europa – to the new. ‘Colin Chapman had moved us to a new factory at Hethel in 1967 and invested in new technologies, both of which were building quite rightly to a move upmarket. I remember him saying, “When you’re producing lots of small cars, while they’re attainable, fun to drive and inexpensive, you can be busy fools when it comes to being a manufacturer.” If you’re investing a lot of money in the cars then you have to make enough margin to plough back into new models.’
Targeting what Mike called the ‘high-performance, state-ofthe-art supercar market’, Lotus was aiming at the space between Porsche and Ferrari. ‘For the M70 [Esprit] project we were looking to use our own engine – the world’s first four-valve-per-cylinder all-alloy unit – which was terrifically efficient and had both great
power output and low emissions. A V8 model [M71] based on the slant four was planned but that unfortunately didn’t happen because of a lack of funds.’ Having been made chief engineer, Mike’s remit now included the M50/52 (Elite/eclat) and M70 projects.
‘Our first meeting with Giorgetto Giugiaro was at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1972. Colin had his own twin-engine propeller light aircraft and we flew over with Oliver Winterbottom and Fred Bushell.’ They never missed it, because it was the show where concept cars were unveiled. ‘You got the chance to see what everyone else was doing and to network. I can recall Colin being very impressed with Giorgetto, who suggested he’d like to do a show car with us. Colin immediately jumped on it and said, “Let’s do it.” If successful, it would provide us with a potential successor to the Twin Cam Europa.’
Mike made up a stretched Twin Cam chassis, with widened track and a lengthened wheelbase, and installed the 2.0-litre engine and transmission. This was sent down to Italdesign in Turin, where Giorgetto would style the body and build it on to the chassis. ‘During that time we would sometimes visit once a week; taking off from Hethel at 5am – it’s a long old flight over the Alps in a light aircraft – working all day with the Ital’ team, then flying back and getting home at 11pm.’
The M70 Esprit started as a series of sketches with the eventual silver show car first displayed at the Turin Motor Show in September 1972. ‘It was the absolute star of the show,’ recalls Mike. After this Mike arranged for his engineers, and the designers working under Oliver Winterbottom, to live and work in Turin to turn the concept model into a basic design that could be made using Lotus’s specialised production methods.
‘Oliver spent nearly eight months there, and we coined a word at the time – they had to “practicalise” the concept car. It’d been designed just as a clean shape; one that was beautiful and took your breath away, but it had to be modified substantially to facilitate being manufactured by our body moulding processes.’
This ‘practicalisation’ was only partly successful. ‘By the time it came back it needed a lot more engineering work to be done,’ Mike explains. ‘As an example – the styling model was without blemish. Our VARI process would shoot the body and the finished surface [bodyshell] as an integrated structure; this patented process was designed so you made the body in two halves, joined at the centreline. That meant you split Giorgetto’s car in half horizontally – you could imagine the work that went into that.
‘The windscreen had been styled at 18 degrees, but anything below 22 degrees and theoretically you got double image [parallax]. The A-post was leaning back so far, but it was what made the car look so fast. Giorgetto had lent us the Porsche Tapiro concept car. Colin and I drove it round Turin and got lost in a rain storm – the police eventually coming out to look for us because it was worth $400,000 – but we couldn’t see out of it because of the screen angle; the Maserati Boomerang was even worse.’
‘Working on the model, Colin and Giorgetto were both determined that the A-pillar wouldn’t be raised’
Mike recalls one evening late at night. ‘Colin and Giorgetto were working with white plaster of Paris on the model and a couple of big files, scraping away; both were determined that the A-pillar wouldn’t be raised. In the end it turned out the screen was not only flat but had a couple of ears on it at the bottom, so it actually flaps forward out towards the lower front corners left and right. I was worried we’d be able to see the bend in it, but we made one and you couldn’t. It shows you the involvement of both, absolutely intense and right down to the knuckle on the details. The A-pillar stayed, and the “fast visual effect” was not lost.’
With the M50/52 workload taking precedence at Hethel, and limited resources, the M70 project was carried out at nearby Ketteringham Hall by a tiny team working twenty-four-seven under the direction of Tony Rudd and Colin Spooner. With the red pre-production prototype running, it returned to Lotus Cars for further refinement and development in readiness for manufacturing and sale. ‘We were all very pleased with the Esprit; it was very, very good and the reaction to it extremely positive. Lots of orders were coming in, and lots of people worldwide wanted to drive it. Overall, it was a stunning success.’
Mike cites the Turbo Esprit as the first big step-change in model’s evolution. ‘In late 1976 Colin [Chapman] and I agreed to re-establish Lotus Engineering as a client-based business. I secured the Lotus Sunbeam Talbot project and John Delorean approached Colin. We were also doing a lot of work relating to turbo lag for clients. With the Turbo Esprit, Graham Atkin and Martin Cliffe achieved a radical change in driveability and elimination of throttle lag that set a new worldwide standard of turbocharging. Journalists rated it the best turbocharged car ever.
‘It was also the first Esprit where I won my long-standing engineering battle with Colin and implemented a twin wishbone
rear suspension, which brought improved levels of refinement, ride and handling. Using driveshafts as the upper wishbone on a mid-engined car might have been cost-effective, but it certainly inhibited the ride and handling capabilities.’
The second step-change in the Esprit timeline, he says, was the Peter Stevens re-style. ‘The folded paper original was fundamentally a beautiful clean shape, but – like the Porsche 911 – it lent itself to being evolved. Peter Stevens and Colin Spooner did a fantastic job of softening and updating the original, and it was incredibly successful – we were selling 450 Esprits a year before the restyle, but sold 1058 in the first year after.’ This was an extremely successful low-cost, fast-to-market project that firmly established the Esprit as a long-term winner.
Of course the Esprit’s legend wasn’t built purely on styling and engineering; the silver screen has also had a part to play. ‘The movie appearances were some of the biggest advantages we had,’ says Mike. ‘As a tiny company we didn’t have money for advertising, our policy and philosophy was to get maximum bang for the buck. PR was absolutely key and in Don Maclauchlan we had the most fabulous PR manager – so professional, so dynamic and full of ideas. I can’t speak highly enough of him.’
It was Don’s idea to approach Cubby Broccoli, famously putting an red pre-production Esprit outside Pinewood Studios to arouse executives’ curiosity. ‘It was incredible how he persevered,’ says Mike. ‘Eventually he got a meeting and it went into the
James Bond 007 films. We never looked back from that – it was literally worth millions of dollars of free advertising. It wasn’t just a one-shot thing, because it’s gone on forever. Every time a Bond movie with an Esprit came out, you could see the sales increasing.’ It was a similar case with the X180 Turbo SE in the film
Pretty Woman. ‘After the first screening, the next day we took five orders in Hong Kong for the exact same car! In the film Richard Gere’s character was merely going to pick up Julia Roberts in the car, but Don and I explained how a stick shift could make an interesting bit of repartee between them and wrote most of the resulting conversation.’
The Esprit’s final big screen showing came in the thriller Basic Instinct and Mike remembers being called on to the set. ‘I was on my way to a race in the Golden Gate area of San Francisco at Sonoma Raceway – where Paul Newman, Doc Bundy and Bobby Carradine were racing Esprits for us – and I was informed that a stunt lady had rolled the black Esprit down the studio cliff. The insurance company wasn’t happy and asked me if I could see whether it needed to be written off or not. Luckily she was okay and, while it showed that the Esprit was good after dropping a long way onto its roof, I did have to.’ As with the other appearances, it was advertising manna from heaven. ‘I think only Aston Martin has achieved a similar level of publicity, promotion and free advertising as Lotus did with the Esprit.’
Mike had just taken over as President and CEO of Lamborghini when the V8 Esprit finally landed. ‘I thought “whoa, really great, what Lotus has been trying to do since 1973, and started again in 1978/’79 before the second oil crisis stopped it.”’
In 2005 he returned to Hethel, again as a Group Director and then CEO. Incredibly, the Esprit had only just ceased production. ‘I’m very proud to have been a part of it, and to have gone back to initiate and create the Evora,’ he says. ‘My only disappointment is that in the draft business plan of 2006/’07 there was a new Esprit with a V10. It would have been a fabulous car.
‘That said, the Esprit’s enduring legacy is a testimony to two creative genii – Colin and Giorgetto were just so comfortable working with, and so respectful of, each other – and to the perseverance and determination of Lotus Cars and all the great people who’ve worked there.’
‘In Pretty Woman, Gere was merely going to pick up Roberts. We wrote most of the resulting conversation’