Lotus Esprit

The Lotus Esprit is a sports car that was built by Lotus in the United Kingdom between 1976 and 2004. The silver Italdesign concept that eventually became the Esprit was unveiled at the Turin Motor Show in 1972 as a concept car, and was a development of a stretched Lotus Europa chassis. It was among the first of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro's polygonal "folded paper" designs. Originally, the name Kiwi was proposed, but in keeping with the Lotus tradition of having all car model names start with the letter "E", the name became Esprit.

S1 (1976)

The Esprit was launched in October 1975 at the Paris Auto Show, and went into production in June 1976, replacing the Europa in the Lotus model lineup. These first cars eventually became known as S1 (or Series 1) Esprits. With a steel backbone chassis and a fiberglass body, the Esprit was powered by the Lotus 907 4-cylinder engine, as previously used in the Jensen Healey. This engine displaced 2.0 L, produced 160 bhp (119 kW; 162 PS) in European trim 140 bhp (104 kW; 142 PS) in US/Federal trim, and was mounted longitudinally behind the passengers, as in its predecessor. The transaxle gearbox was a 5-speed manual unit, previously used in the Citroën SM and Maserati Merak; it featured inboard rear brakes, as was racing practice at the time. The Series 1 embodied Lotus' performance through light weight mantra, weighing less than 1,000 kg (2,205 lb).