It's now 20 years since the last V8 Esprit was made - here's how to get the best one
It's now 20 years since the last V8 Esprit was made - here's how to get the best oneSome cars have been horribly unreliable, others have been fineDesigned by a genius and built by enthusiasts, the Lotus Esprit has been delighting and delighting and to some extent frustrating owners since 1976. With a composite body on a steel spine chassis and powered by various versions of Lotus’s 2.
Up to that point, Lotus had been a small manufacturer making small cars with small engines, so the launch of the Esprit V8 in 1996 was a headline-making event, especially as Lotus was once again going down the expensive route of building its own engine. The 918 was an all-aluminium flat-plane 3.5 litre V8 with two Garrett turbochargers giving it a claimed output of 350hp.
Classic values revolve around rarity and desirability, and the Esprit V8 is scoring hard on at least one of those fronts. Altogether, including the gen-one, well over 10,000 Esprits were built, but fewer than 1,500 of them were V8s. Five in every six of those were regular V8 SEs, with around 200 V8 GTs and no more than 50 Sport 350s.
The redline was quite low at 7,000rpm and the twin turbochargers were only running at half a bar so it was a usefully unstressed unit, but even so early V8s did suffer from water leaks between the liners and the block. Lotus covered most of these claims under warranty which was just as well as the engine had to be pulled for the repair to be carried out.
The pedal travel for the ventilated disc brakes was quite short, making them hard to modulate in traffic, but at higher speeds on the open road they were great. Lower suspension arm bushings are consumable items on these cars. Five-spoke OZ racing split-rim wheels were a desirable factory alternative to the six-spokes put on at launch.
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