[40 years of the last Lotus World Championship]
Unlike the long-winded Ferrari 308, steering even through the Gorge’s narrow hairpins only needs a half-turn of the wheel, hands fixed by the horizontal spokes. And unlike the Porsche 911, there’s barely any sensation of weight transfer in any direction at all, the tyres’ grip unyielding on this bone-dry tarmac. And yet, despite remaining level when cornered hard through second-gear bends, there’s no skittishness. The trademark Lotus long-travel damping produces a ride that could almost be described as luxurious.
As the Esprit plunges deeper into the Gorge, I realise something slightly odd for a performance car. Not once have I glanced at the speedo. Admittedly the Championship Model’s steering wheel makes this difficult, but there’s more to it than that. This car isn’t about hitting impressive figures on dials – although it will crack 138mph, accompanied by a racetrack scream – but rather the tactile delight of total-involvement driving. The gearbox, the same Citroën SM unit as a Maserati Merak’s but with a shorter throw to the lever, has a beautifully positive movement with just enough weight to prompt committed actions. It must have been a revelation to a serial Lotus customer coming from the marque’s previous F1-inspired mid-engined celebration, the 1972 Europa Special, which sported one of the most convoluted linkages, and unpleasantly imprecise gearchange actions, ever known on a Seventies machine.
The Esprit’s steering setup, too, must be one of the most communicative ever fitted to a road car. Through its chunkyrimmed wheel, it transmits everything the front tyres encounter straight into your palms with millimetric precision in a manner that makes even the Porsche 911 feel numb. And yet, perhaps this is its one undoing? Piling into a third-gear left-hander, the front wheels hit some rutted, subsiding tarmac. The lively fizz of the wheelrim suddenly becomes violent overload, the fissures in the road surface trying to claw the chunky wheel from my hands. The solution to this issue is to believe in the grip of the tyres, hold the wheel firm and trust the car to remain faithful to its line, such is the composure of the chassis.
Truth be told, hyperactive steering isn’t the Esprit’s only shortcoming. It’s noisy at cruising speeds, giving off a constant gravelly gargle that sounds fantastic when you’re hurtling around country lanes, but must get tiresome when you fancy listening to a radio that cost a hefty £76 in 1978. The Countach-like lines of the bodywork generate Lamborghini visibility issues too – although the sides of the car are easy to position on the road, the base of the windscreen is the forwardmost point of the car you can see from behind the wheel unless you pop the headlamps up. Rear three-quarter visibility is dominated by massive C-pillars and the protruding engine-bay air scoops added as part of the S2 revisions to cure the original Esprit’s overheating issues.
Still, no one complains about such things on an Italian supercar following a drive in one. Instead, they wax lyrical about a sense of glorious irrationality, exploding with superlatives about the sense of style, excitement and motor sport breeding. Uncritical, gushing praise for Ferrari, combined with lingering-glance photography, has generated an entire coffee-table book industry. And yet, having driven this Esprit Championship Model, I feel exactly the same way about it. It’s every bit the thoroughbred its contemporary Ferrari 512BB was. It just goes about it in a uniquely British way that we Brits are stereotypically dismissive of.
The 512BB takes its lead from Italian motor sport practice, with an aluminium body over a combination of tubular chassis and semi-monocoque glassfibre tub, and an engine with its origins in Ferrari’s Formula One programme. It was intended be the closest thing to driving a 512S sports-racer on the road.
The Esprit does the same thing, but draws upon British garagiste racing practice. The original Esprit hit the road the same year as the uniquely British S2000 class of sports-racers burst onto the Brands Hatch tarmac for the first time, their glassfibre bodies sitting on steel chassis, weight and drag kept low to extract maximum performance from a 2.0-litre engine. Those twin camshafts and four-valve cylinder heads resembled those of a Cosworth DFV, the engine with 12 F1 World Championships to its name. In an era when Tyrrell, Brabham, Williams and Mclaren didn’t build road cars, it felt as though the Esprit represented the nation’s entire motor sport industry in the international supercar arena.
But it’s the way the Esprit handles that confirms it as a truly British supercar. Whereas Ferraris seem born for the rapid straights of Monza, and Porsches are designed in the tradition of the rearengined autobahn stromlinien of the Thirties, remaining planted high on the banking at Avus, the Esprit is designed for intense bursts of high performance on a small, crowded island with expensive petrol. Its home would be the bounding switchbacks of Cadwell or Oulton – or your favourite complex of country lanes. The ones you head for when the motorway’s at a tedious crawl.
Lotus still makes cars like this Esprit. However, it’s this model’s nicotine-stained clothes – and the era it was created in – which makes it truly special. It marks Lotus at its absolute zenith – Chapman at the helm pioneering ground-effect, Andretti as World Champion, more Formula One Constructor’s Championship titles in the trophy cabinet than any other team, James Bond eschewing his traditional Aston Martin for an Esprit and an impressive rollcall of celebrities queuing up to buy an Elite. It’s an intoxicating combination that Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche struggled to counter in 1978, and one that no amount of be-stickered specialedition Elises will ever recapture. What Lotus wouldn’t give to stay in that moment for ever.