Meeting your heroes: Driving the Esprit V8 #blogpost

Those of you following my Evora 400 blog and YouTube adventures will know I have been documenting the many aspects of this amazing new Lotus and comparing it with some interesting and unusual rivals. In the post-Bahar era it has become clear than any completely new cars may be some time off - so that got me thinking. The new CEO has clearly tried to push the Evora’s status as closer to supercar than sports car so I thought what better way to judge his success than to compare it with Lotus’ last genuine Supercar, the Esprit. The madcap Vauxhall/Lotus Carlton aside, the new 400 also takes over from the Esprit V8 as most powerful Lotus production road car too (the Evora S was about 5bhp shy of the Esprit V8).

Thanks to an incredibly generous owner and superb owner’s community, yesterday I got to meet one of my motoring icons. When I moved out of London to the countryside, I decided then that I would at least do the sensible thing and get a nicer car. The first item I bought myself in my exhile was a scale model of a 1981 Turbo Esprit, Grand Prix White with black bumpers, compomotive split rims. I came close to buying the real deal on a few occasions but they always escaped me. I think the shape still holds up very well today and no amount of Morris Marina doorhandles can persuade me the Esprit was anything other than a proper single digit salute to Enzo’s 308.

Unfortunately, very shortly after the introduction of the Turbo Esprit Lotus founder and all-round motoring legend Colin Chapman died suddenly, amidst a scandal involving a certain Mr John Z Delorean and a large pile of missing government money. The company struggled on, but it survived and today is still going strong. A general lack of funds meant that the Esprit soldiered on for nearly thirty years from its inception until the final models rolled out of the factory in 2003 (with very few being made in 2004). From that time it grew in power from 160bhp (even in 1976 that figure wasn’t particularly exciting) to a much more serious 350bhp (positioned between the output of a contemporary 911 and the V8 Ferrari).

The Esprit I was given the opportunity to drive was not just any old Esprit either, it was the tenth from last car ever made - with only 6,500 miles on the clock and I am extremely grateful to the owner for letting me have a go. Most significantly, the car is basically factory spec making it the fairest possible comparison. Many Esprits, V8s in particular, have been modified considerably from new.

Eight at Last

A V8 Esprit was always on the cards for the company - even in the 1970s a model code was assigned for the V8 Esprit, and Lotus planned to scale up their 2.2L slant four into a 4-ish litre V8. Unfortunately, that never happened. The introduction of the V8 was, in the finest Lotus tradition, born of necessity rather than desire. The four-pot turbo was no longer going to be emissions compliant and Lotus realised there was no off-the-shelf engine that would fit inside the Esprit’s small and (then) 20-year-old frame. It was dictated very early on that no chassis modification could be made, but I personally cannot understand the decision to build a new engine rather than a new chassis for a crate engine. I’m sure they had their reasons, but they are unknown to me.

Most frustratingly, what could also not be changed was the Renault UN1 gearbox. That gearbox had originally featured in the Renault 25 and replaced the previous Citroen SM-derived box but, as with the engine, was the only one they could make fit. Renault apparently did some considerable work to try and strengthen it as much as they could, but ultimately it was not built to take much more than the 205hp provided by Renault’s V6. The 500bhp that the new Lotus twin-turbo flat-plane crank 3.5L V8 kicked out was far too much.

So, in the saddest twist of all, Lotus’ firebreathing new motor was detuned down to 350bhp. Still a very healthy figure now, but far from the world-changer it could have been. The real kicker for Lotus was that because Renault had officially stopped making the gearboxes for themselves, Lotus paid so much to buy the obsolete part that they spent just as much buying the crippling gearbox as they spent developing a new engine. That is to say nothing of the cylinder liner problems early V8s experienced.

Inherently wrong, or inherently right?

So a de-tuned engine with an ancient French gearbox in a 20-year-old chassis does not exactly sound like an inspiring recipe for a supercar, does it? What really should be taken from this is the fact that despite the car now has more than double its original power output and number of cylinders, it still feels relatively cohesive. It certainly doesn’t feel like the engine is trying to explode out of the chassis, as you might expect.

Having read about the car, I knew that compared to an Elise or Evora, the Esprit’s chassis was stone-age technology. The car has a central backbone shaped a bit like this: >——-< - with engine in a cradle at the back and everything draped over it. Despite using advanced techniques for the time, the Esprit’s chassis was only one fifth as stiff as an Elise. And the Evora is 2.5x stiffer again.

Getting in the car for the first time was sensory overload, it is with some time to think back that I can now most accurately convey the experience. Getting into the Esprit is a genuine old-school supercar experience. I recently tested the Evora against a 355, which would have been a contemporary of the first V8 Esprits. The Esprit seems to have more in common with an old Lamborghini than that Ferrari - at least as far as ergonomics are concerned. The transmission tunnel feels chest height, the window very high and there is no room for particularly large drivers. As Lotus have a history of making cars for smaller people, this one is still large by their standards - but earlier Esprits did not have much headroom. This car had the roof panel removed so felt light and airy but I can see one being quite claustrophobic under the wrong circumstances.

The front of the car is not visible at all and the relatively high dash line makes the car feel impossibly wide. Apparently there’s only an inch difference in width, but if you told me the Esprit was six inches wider, from the driver’s seat I would believe you. The controls are all radically different from the Evora, a general softness and vagueness is in the pedals of the Esprit, although perhaps familiarity with my own car is fooling me. What is most shocking to the driver of any 21st century car is the throttle travel. Modern cars seem to have their throttles wide open with about 40% of pedal travel, the esprit doesn’t seem to acknowledge your foot is there until you put an inch of movement in.

On the move, the first thing that shocks me - and does until I get out the car - is the softness of the suspension. Combined with a very low splitter at the front, this car can grind on even moderately uneven surfaces. Something I found out a few times on my first drive. The gearbox doesn’t really hinder progress as much as some reviews might imply, but it’s certainly not a fun thing to use. Even this box-fresh example can’t hide the fact it’s an uninspiring french unit. It probably has more in common with the current Renault vans than a Clio Sport, in case anyone thinks I’m being automatically derisory of all-things Gallic.
What absolutely is missing from the party though, is the soundtrack to go with the looks. Lotus told people their V8 was a flat plane crank design and most people would hope that would give it the same sort of sound Ferrari extract from their V8s. Sadly not. Even cars equipped with aftermarket exhausts sound more like a traditional rumbling V8 than a howling 355 or 360. This car doesn’t sound particularly different from a four-pot Esprit. In its defence, if you didn’t get the odd hiss from the wastegate you wouldn’t guess it was turbo’d. It’s mild state of tune no doubt helps mask that fact. It simply feels quite muscular. Perhaps the gearing is masking the potency of the unit, but the Evora feels much more than “just” 50bhp and 7lb-ft stronger. It’s also a bit more immediate and, of course, miles more vocal.

In Conclusion

So my time in an Esprit was a brief one, but thoroughly enjoyable none-the-less. In some ways it disappointed, in other ways it really surprised me. The latter particularly in just how good they look in the flesh. For a car that’s thirteen years old now, was a ten year-old redesign then and was twenty years old before that, it still draws a crowd. So that is a testament to the strength of the original model.

It always will be a “what if” car, a common story for Lotus. Whilst driving I started to think how the Esprit and the Evora really stack up. The Esprit was something of a supercar at the time - 350bhp, 175mph and 0-60 in less than five seconds were all serious numbers when the model debuted in 1996. By the time this car was phased out you could get those figures from an M3 and now the latest breed of super-hot hatchbacks will beat it in a straight line.

So the Evora 400 isn’t an Esprit, the new Esprit will be - and I can’t wait for that car to happen (fingers crossed it does!). What I found when reading about the Esprit was that it offered pace,drama and theatre of the Ferrari type for prices comparable with a garden variety Porsche. So I decided that would be the best way to judge the success of the Evora 400 - in value for money terms. When you look at it that way, the 400 is an extremely worthy successor to the Esprit. A new 911 costs around 50% more than it did when the first Esprit V8 came out, a Ferrari 488 is at least double what the 355/360 were. However the Evora costs less than 10% more than the old Esprit. It might not have the outright pace to earn it a supercar tag in the modern world, but in terms of drama and driving experience, it is right up there with the very best on sale today. But it does so at a price point even lower than it’s rivals from Stuttgart. So judged by that standard, the Evora 400 may not be a supercar - but it is the definition of a proper Lotus.