The Lotus Esprit – One of the Cars I Fell in Love With

There are cars you like, cars you admire, and then there are those few cars that somehow get under your skin when you’re young and never really leave.

For me, the Lotus Esprit was one of those cars.

I’ve always loved Lotus, but there was something particularly special about the Esprit. It was impossibly low, wonderfully angular and looked completely unlike the ordinary cars around it. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and launched in the 1970s, it looked less like a conventional British sports car and more like somebody had been given a ruler and asked to design the future.

Then James Bond drove one into the sea….. what a waste or was it….

If I hadn’t already fallen for the Esprit, The Spy Who Loved Me certainly finished the job. Roger Moore’s (one of the best Bonds), white Lotus plunges from a jetty, disappears beneath the water and, rather than sinking, transforms into a submarine and carries on.

As a youngster, what more could you possibly want from a car?

Unfortunately, adulthood eventually brought two disappointing discoveries. The first was that the submarine conversion wasn’t actually available from Lotus. The second was that the Esprit itself was rather more expensive than my wallet was ever prepared to accommodate or still is unfortunately.

So it been one of those cars I’ve admired from afar.

And perhaps that’s part of its appeal, most of us have one, the car we spotted when we were younger (they were super rare, I can count on one hand how many I’ve seen in the flesh) and thought, one day. Then mortgages, families, bills and real life arrived, while the object of our affection quietly became a desirable classic and moved financially even further in the wrong direction.

The Esprit deserved that affection, though. Beneath Giugiaro’s extraordinary wedge shape was the philosophy that made Lotus special, keep the weight down, concentrate on handling and make the relationship between driver and car more important than simply chasing enormous horsepower figures.

Over the years the Esprit grew up, the early four-cylinder cars led to the Turbo Esprit, the shape evolved, and eventually Lotus installed a twin-turbo V8. Yet somehow it never lost its identity, you could look at an Esprit from almost any period and immediately know what it was.

More than anything, though, I think the Esprit reminds me why we become interested in cars in the first place.

It isn’t always rational.

Sometimes you see a car when you’re young and simply decide that it’s brilliant. You don’t know about servicing costs, insurance premiums or whether getting in and out of something that low will become considerably more entertaining as you get older.

You just want one.

I’ve never owned a Lotus Esprit, unless something rather unexpected happens to its value or my bank balance I may never own one, but one day, I always live in hope.

But if somebody handed me the keys to a white Series 1 tomorrow, I know exactly what would happen.

For a few moments I’d be that youngster again, looking at one of the first cars I ever truly fell in love with.

And I’d probably spend the entire drive trying very hard not to head towards the nearest jetty.

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