1986 LOTUS ESPRIT S3
When you know what you want, you know what you want, and Edward Ungar knew exactly what he wanted after falling in love with the Lotus Esprit on a childhood visit to the 1986 Motor Show
‘My father is an avid enthusiast and has had various classics, but after passing my test I used the family Volvo until I reached 25 in 2001 and could buy and insure my first car, the Lotus Esprit that I still own. I fell for the For Your Eyes Only Esprit and then saw a gleaming white Esprit S3 on the Lotus stand at the Motor Show on a childhood visit soon after. I didn’t see The Spy
Who Loved Me until a year or two later as I was too young when it came out, although that just sealed the love affair; I knew from the age of ten that my first car would be an Esprit.
‘I went to look at this one with my father. It was the first one that we’d seen and it was in good condition with a full history and lots of records, so we bought it. The £7000 I paid seemed like a fortune then but seems amazingly cheap now. One of the things that appealed, apart from the colour (black Esprits are rare), was the history. It was originally owned by Tullett and Tokyo, an Eighties city brokerage firm that used it as a reward for employees; the top performer of the month got to take it home for the weekend. The original wiring for a giant Racal mobile phone was still in the centre console when I bought it.
‘It had been serviced well and the lady I purchased it from then bought it and cherished it for 11 years. It had done just over 40,000 miles (so not a great deal) when I bought it and had already had that all-important engine re-build.
‘I immediately took it to Lotus specialist Lakeside Engineering. Amazingly they remembered it from when Lotus dealer Bell and Colvill sold and serviced it from from new. I’ll never forget their words: “Lotus build quality means there are good ones and bad ones, and this is one of the good ones.”
‘I used it as my everyday commuter from the start – living the dream! – and continued to do so until 2015 when it was no longer practical for family life and I bought a Renault Zoe! I’ve loved driving it from day one and think I always will. I’ve never taken it abroad, though; it’s black and has no air-con so a trip to, say, Italy or Spain would be challenging for both car and driver. It has been up to Scotland twice before, though, and visited various events.
‘My friends all know me by my car and joke about it being my longest running relationship, although I’m not sure that they’d say that to my wife! That’s why it’s now covered almost 110,000 miles and although it has left me stranded a few times, most notably in a graveyard after a funeral, it’s been nowhere near as troublesome as the reputation might lead you to expect because it is used and serviced regularly.
‘I did get Stocks Sports Cars to re-spray it in 2011 because it was getting a bit shabby, but I’d used it for everything, even moving house with it at least twice, which involved lots of short runs.
‘I used to attend club events regularly and did max it out once while I was chasing other more powerful Esprits. But I think it’s best that we don’t go into where or when that happened…’
CLUBS & SPECIALISTS
■ Club Lotus. clublotus.co.uk
■ Lakeside Engineering. lakesideengineering.com
■ QED. qedmotorsport.co.uk
■ PJS. pjslotus.co.uk
■ PNM. pnmengineering.com