Lotus Esprit (1990) – Into the Wild

It is slightly different from the Volvo Amazon of the past and this Volvo 343, but this Lotus Esprit has at least one thing in common with it: it was spotted by Jente Horsting. Thanks again for sharing the photos, Jente! An Esprit certainly does not appear every day and it has even been more than seven years since one last shone in this section. That was a green copy, this one is in a more timeless silver gray. The Esprit is quite timeless anyway. If you consider that the basic design is already almost 50 years old, you can still say that Giorgetto Giugiaro showed a strong piece of drawing art at the time.

The Esprit we have here in front of us is of course a solid evolution of the original design. This is one of the Esprit series introduced in 1988, which had more rounded shapes than its predecessors. Just like before, Lotus did not develop all the external details itself: for example, this Esprit borrows its side mirrors from the Citroën CX and the rear lights come from the Toyota Levin AE86. Previously, the Esprit had, among other things, the rear lights of the Rover SD1 and even buttons and switches from the Morris Marina were spooned into the interior.

Lotus Esprit

The beating heart was from Lotus itself and in this case it has the blown 2.2-liter version of the four-cylinder on board. Not the crème de la crème of the moment, the Turbo SE, but the HC. At the time, however, you could also look very good for the day. Shooting from 0 to 100 km / h in roughly 5.5 seconds was achievable with quick pokers and the top speed was also fine at just 245 km / h. Later, the Esprit V8 would make all its predecessors pale, but then we are talking about a rare appearance. It doesn’t necessarily have to be more spectacular than this, it’s been nice to see such a neat Esprit just appear in the Dutch street scene. In 2008 it came to cheer up our country for the first time and it still does so with the same owner to this day. So apparently it still makes him happy and we get that.