For Lotus and especially the Lotus Espirit that the very spirit and decision that Lotus make more use of their own cars and factory production facilities from 1974 onwards, it was decided to replace the mid-engined Lotus "Europa" with a brand new model and workup of mid engine automobile utilizing the same 16 valve 2 liter engine, installed at 45 degrees to the chassis. However the new car, which was designated and named "Espirit" retained the backbone, pressed steel frame layout of the old Europa, it was entirely and fully a new vehicle in detail.
Also new was the wedge-style glassfibre body shape, carried out for Lotus by the famous Italian automotive stylist.Giugiaro, and the use of a modified Citroen SM gearbox and final drive assembly - the difference being that SM's transaxle had originally been front mounted for a front wheel drive installation. Although it also had been adapted for use in the mid -engine Maserati Merak as well.
The all-independent suspension was engineered fro series-production use, but the geometry akin on that found to racing sports cars, and the entire vehicle showed signs of Lotus's racing roots and heritage. Like other contemporary Lotuses. Too it had flip-up headlamps plus a much more luxurious interior and fascia than any previous road car from this Lotus factory. One of the clever tricks used by Lotus and Lotus management to keep their costs and investment costs to a bare minimum was that they picked components from other car that is if they could not afford to develop on their own. Half a loaf of bread - or in this a fine automobile on the road or race track, was better than none at all. Thus the first Espirits had Opel Ascona front suspension components and modified Lancia Beta high performance disk brakes.
Production did not begin until 1976, when the first Espirits were found to be rather disappointingly slower than the claims that had been made for them on announcement. To their great credit however, Lotus management and engineers went back to the "drawing boards' and took the time, detail to attention and energy to more than rectify this. All in all, in hindsight this could be due to the variable performance of the Lotus built engines. These corrections had to be made before the cars' full 135 / 140 miles per hour performance could be guaranteed 100 percent.
In the next few years however, much more intensive and elaborate development work was carried out, without disturbing the general style or concepts of the automobile. Series 2 models from mid 1978, had new styling details, while by 1980 not only had the engine been enlarged to 2,174 cc, but a very powerful ( 210 bhp) instead of the original 156bhp turbocharged engine had been developed.
Yet in the end it was "show biz' that brought the Lotus Espirit to great attention and not even the vehicle as much. A white Lotus Espirit S1 was featured as James Bonds' car in the 1971 Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me'. This had such a great impact on the popularity and even notoriety of the auto that it was followed up by a performance of the brand new Turbo Espirit as a star feature all by itself in the 1981 James Bond spy movie "For Your Eyes Only".
Toni E. Williams Edmonton Fiat Dealers watch for our Alberta Canadian launch dates for the Fiat 500 Derrick Dodge Chrysler Highest Volume means lowest prices to you Windermere Mazda MX-5 "The Big Store"
No comments:
Post a Comment