Background
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I’d love to say that Ursula Andress emerging goddess like from the Caribbean sea, dripping wet in a white bikini is my over-riding early memory of James Bond films, but it’s actually a white car. We didn’t get to the cinema much when I was a kid (we made our own entertainment in those days) but for my 12th birthday treat my dad took me to see The Spy Who Loved Me where I fell in love not with Barbara Bach, but with the Lotus Esprit.
It’s dramatic chiselled wedge profile is still striking today, but in late 70s depression ravaged Britain it was a revelation. I remember thinking it must have been built specially for the movie, but of course it had actually been released by Lotus a year earlier, as a replacement for the Europa.
The usual Lotus construction method of steel backbone chassis with glassfibre bodywork was retained from the previous model – but that was about all that was, which was entirely intentional.
Lotus boss Colin Chapman knew that producing low volume kit cars was a tenuous existence, as the likes of TVR, Marcos and AC proved by lurching from one financial crisis to another. Always a man with unlimited aspirations, Chapman wanted to launch Lotus into the luxury performance car market and compete with the likes of Porsche and Ferrari. It was a heady dream, and one that few thought realistic, but that wasn’t going to stop him trying.
In order to transform Lotus from specialist sports car producer to one with showrooms in London West End, he needed a car with arresting looks, neck snapping performance and impeccable handling, and for the first of these ingredients he turned to Giorgetto Giugiaro, whose folded paper designs had already attracted the likes of Maserati and Volkswagen, for whom he went on to design the Boomerang and Golf.
The second of the trio of ingredients of Chapman’s signature dish were delivered to Giugiaro’s Ital Design studio in Milan in 1971 – a modified Europa chassis with its dimensions changed to suit the M70 prototype Lotus engineers had designed as the underpinnings for the new supercar. The final part of the dish was a new engine.
The enigmatic Lotus boss knew the company would need to produce something a little more exciting than the Europa’s Renault engine, and that the 1600cc Ford Kent based Lotus Twin Cam wasn’t up to the job of providing the kind of performance he needed from the new car. Handily a 2-litre, double overhead cam, 4-valve per cylinder slant four was in development by Lotus for Jensen (Chapman also envisaged it being the basis of a future 4-litre V8).
With only 160bhp the new Lotus looked, on paper at least, as though it would struggle against German and Italian competition, but with a kerb weight of under 1000kg its power-to-weight ratio gave it a fighting chance, and although most road testers struggled to replicate the factory’s claimed figures of 0-60 in 8secs and 133mph top speed, its superb handling was universally lauded – and it was oh so beautiful.
Lotus PR manager Don McLaughlan’s triumph of getting Roger Moore’s 007 into the driving seat of an Esprit, albeit with a dazzling array of non-factory options added to the car's aura.
The S1 Esprit was made for two years before Lotus addressed a lot of the car’s shortcomings by improving the seating and interior trim, upgrading the instruments and switchgear and fitting a new wraparound front spoiler and custom built alloy wheels, which raised the car’s luxury image considerably. In 1978 Lotus won the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship and celebrated by releasing a limited edition Esprit trimmed in their sponsor’s iconic JPS livery. The black and gold has often been sited as the best race-car sponsorship colour scheme out there.
