Lotus cars are always minimalist, therefore they are lightweight but lack of luxury and practicality. They are the cars for real drivers!

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Several years later, Chapman transformed the Mk 6 race car to his first-ever road car, Mk 7. Then in the same year he unveiled the most technically advanced sports car then, the Elite. His original idea was using the profit gained in road car to fund his ambitious racing project. Even so, he created several other excellent sports cars, including the best selling Elan, his first mid-engined car Europa and his only supercar Esprit.

As Chapman was more a F1 designer than a car maker, Lotus Cars Co. was usually underdeveloped and lack of proper funding. Therefore while Team Lotus became the most winning team in the 60s and 70s, the road car division remained weak. After his sudden death in 1981, the company had to struggle for survival. In 1984, 25% stakes were sold to Toyota (since then the Japanese company gained the multivalve technology) and eventually completely sold to GM in 1988.

When GM came, most people thought Lotus's bad luck would be over. Yes, GM spent some 40 million dollars for the development of M100 (Elan II), but disappointing sales forced the US giant to quit.

Then the white-hair man of Bugatti entered the scene and the situation got even worse. Bugatti was too small compare with Lotus and itself even got into bankruptcy. After long talks with potential buyers, Lotus was sold to Malaysian car maker Proton.

Since 1996, Lotus has been rising again, thanks to the success of Elise, which is now selling faster than any previous Lotus. Why could it succeed? Because it returns to Chapman’s principle - enhance performance through lightness !

In those days, its tubular steel spaceframe chassis was very advanced, just like the aluminium chassis of Elise in today. As the car was as light as 571 kg, the series of Ford engine (with Lotus's cylinder head) could push it from zero to 60 mph in seven seconds. However, its reputation was established in handling rather than performance. Ultra-light weight and rigid chassis made it the most responsive, agile, direct, and communicative entertainer. In fact, I had never read any test reports without praising the Seven as the most exciting driving machine in the world. The closest experience you can find is to drive a go-cart or even a Formula 3.

Top speed was a bounded by the poor aerodynamic (drag coefficient around 0.7), since Chapman was more concerned about acceleration and cornering agility. Comfort was also a nonsense to the Seven. It got no radio, no air-con, no glove box, no doors, no roof and even no soft top in early versions. The cabin was very cramped, too. That’s the price for optimal weight saving.

Under the care of Caterham, Seven received more performance upgrade - first came the Opel 2 litres 16V engine, which made the 175 hp Seven HPC. Then came the special edition, Seven JPE (Jonathan Palmer Edition), with even 250 hp. It held the world record of 0-100mph-0 with an astonishing time of 12.41 sec until McLaren F1 LM broke that nearly a decade later. The latest Seven Superlight R concentrated on further weight reduction, and it is still described as the most exciting car to drive.

Another reason for its classic status is rarity. From 1958 to 1963 only 1048 cars were produced and each one was losing money because of the extreme production cost for the chassis. Since the connecting points between the glass-fiber body and mechanical parts required very tight tolerances, which was a nightmare for glass-fiber of the time being, Lotus actually scrapped many out-of-specification body. Others have to be corrected with intensive care. As a result, every Elite was built in loss. Since then, no other car try that.

For the power source, Lotus had no choice other than those serving the Seven, but who would complain those
wonderful engines ? Top of the range was the Elan Sprint, powered by a 1.6-litre twin-cam unit modified from Ford's engine. 126 wonderful horsepower in a 719 kg body ensured the hottest performance - top speed exceeded the 120 mph mark while 0-60 took merely 6.7 sec. Not only quick, the famous Lotus chassis, suspension tuning and steering made it the best handling sports car, better than Alfa Spider, Fiat 124 Spider Abarth, Porsche 914 etc. Perhaps only Ferrari Dino could beat it, but of course they were of different classes.
 

This so-called S1 (series 1) Europa was generally regarded as underpowered, however, its remarkable chassis provides superb handling yet an excellent ride. Colin Chapman pioneered his famous backbone chassis in Europa. It was relatively lightweight compare with steel monocoque and far cheaper to build than spaceframe. As a result, the S1 weighed less than 700 kg, so performance was not as poor as imagined. Moreover, the excellent drag coefficient of 0.29 enabled a top speed of 110 mph.

The S2’s Ford 1.6 twin-cam engine with 5-speed gearbox should shut up those demanding performance matching the image of mid-engined. The 126 hp unit lifted max. speed to 126 mph and 0-60 in just 6.6 seconds. Chapman decided to use this expensive engine after production of the R16 engine ceased.

Judging by classic car standards, the Europa was unlikely to be the most memorable. The lack of a pretty appearance, attention to details and build quality were its biggest faults. People couldn’t understand why a mid-engined sports car could look more like an estate, especially was the Renault-engined Europa. It couldn’t match the contemporary Ferrari Dino at all, although sales figure was pretty good.

Like Europa, the Esprit was also mid-engined but with lower center of gravity. In fact, it was even lower than the astonishing Lamborghini Countach and Diablo, which made it probably the lowest road car in history. Although it was much heavier than other Lotuses, the original Esprit still tipped the scale at a relatively light 1,000 kg. That was very crucial because of its small engine.

Unlike any previous Lotuses, Esprit had an in-house-built engine. This 16 valves 2.0-litre unit was one of the first 4-valve engines applied to road cars. Although very efficient (with 160hp and 140lbft) and light, it was generally regarded as underpowered and "undercylindered" for a mid-engined supercar. At that moment, Porsche 911 had six cylinders and 190 hp while Ferrari 308GTB was even more generous with a 255 hp V8. Even though the lack of power was offset by the lightweight, a mere 4 cylinders caused image problem, especially buyers in this sector were mainly play-boy like young riches.

As Lotus didn’t get a budget to develop a proper engine, it had to spend extra effort to improve the chassis and hoped that would attract real drivers. Therefore in 1978, Esprit was quickly modified into S2, which had wider wheels, bigger radiator and improved air flow. According to Autocar's test, S2 was capable to top 135 mph and did 0-60 mph in 8.0 sec. Not bad though, such performance can hardly matching its exotic appearance.

A couple of years later, the engine was enlarged to 2.2-litre and boosted torque by a massive 20 lbft.

In 1981, the biggest modifications were made to the S3. A turbocharged version was added. It got as much as 210 hp and transformed the car into a really fast machine. Although still a 4-cylinder, it could blast any Porsche and Ferrari rivals away by its supercar-chasing 0-60 time of 6.1sec. Besides, the chassis received a major re-construction, including re-engineered suspensions, new engine mounting to reduce vibration, increased torsional rigidity of chassis and 50% noise reduction in cabin. At last, Esprit no longer lived under the shadow of its rivals.

In 1986, an improved turbo boost increase the power by 5 hp, while torque curve was also improved.

In 1987, the angular body was modernised by Peter Steven (see picture) and then a charge-cooler was added to the SE model in 1989, boosting power to 264 hp. Acceleration cut to under five - just 4.9 sec !

In 1995, a limited edition Esprit 300 was made. Its turbocharged four was boosted to 300 horsepower yet the kerb weight was reduced by 35 kg via deleting equipment, sound insulation etc. and uses a few aluminium body panels. In addition to the stiffer suspension setup, people regarded it as the best handling Esprit of all, even surpassing any subsequent (heavier) Esprit. Its superb steering feel and crisp chassis response was particularly impressive.

Therefore, in 1996 Lotus finally developed a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V8. However, with the exclusion of compact size, the V8 was quite far from world-beating. On the one hand its flat-plane crankshaft generated unattractive noises (perhaps they forgot why they had to build a V8), on the other hand the engine’s throttle response, turbo lag and specific output were all just average. It was believed that the limited development budget of 4 million pounds was the main reason.

The Esprit V8 did improve performance but the 20-year-old chassis started showing age because of lack of major upgrade. Enter the new millennium, Lotus virtually stopped developing the car and letting it to phase out quietly.

At the same time the pricier V8 was introduced, Lotus also detuned the old 4-cylinder to 2.0-litre and 240 hp to serve a cheaper model, Esprit GT3. The car was dead in 99 when demand dried out.

Back to the late 80s, when Lotus had already been taken over by General Motors, the new Elan was given green light for development. Objective was apparent, as indicated by the successful name Elan, GM hoped this car would be produced as much as 5 thousand units annually and lead Lotus to be a medium size manufacturer like Porsche. It sounds ambitious, though GM had the money and power to do so. First it injected some 40 million dollars into the project, then from its subsidiary Isuzu it picked a 1.6-litre turbocharged four to power the new car. Of course, Isuzu had no engine suitable for rear-wheel drive, just like many other family car manufacturer. Therefore the Lotus got no choice other than switching to front-drive.

The new Elan made debut in 1990. With Peter Steven's pretty styling and Lotus' reputation, the compact sports car was at initially praised by the public. Thanks to the 165 hp engine, it provided good performance - 135 mph top speed and 0-60 mph in under 7 sec. Handling was not so good though. Because of the front-drive layout, Lotus engineers had to develop a complex "Interactive wishbones" for the front suspensions, which made it heavier. Although this suspension achieved certain extent of success - some magazines regarded it as the best handling front-drive car ever seen - it still lacked the ultimate feel and crispness found in any previous Lotuses. Weight also accounted for the less-inspiring handling, since the little Elan weighed in excess of 1 tone!

Maybe the worst blow was the existence of Mazda MX-5, which was more fun to drive and being a lot cheaper. As a result, sales was well below the target. After 3 years of struggling, the highly-expected Elan II was axed from the model line-up. GM left and sold Lotus to Romano Artioli of Bugatti.

However, Elan II was not dead yet. In 1994, Lotus relaunched the Elan as S2, with many tweaks to improve build quality and attention to details, although new emission control led to a drop of 10 horsepower. It was regarded as better to own than the S1. An audit found Lotus could lower the price a bit yet make a profit from building just 800 cars, so it really did that. After that, the assembly tooling was sealed and eventually sold to Kia for producing its version of Elan in Korea.