Just after WW II, an Englishman by the name of Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman took a 1930 Austin 7 and modified it for his own sports use.

The rest, as they say, is history…Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Chapman’s Lotus outfit produced a variety of cars that excelled in circuit racing from Club to International level.

By the late 1960s, Lotus had become involved in F1 competition but, like others of the time, they used the DFV V8 Ford/Cosworth engine in their own chassis.

Lotus had produced a number of road cars by this stage too, albeit thinly disguised racers and invariably using someone else’s engine.

Unveiled at the 1972 Turin Automobile Show, the Esprit was all Lotus and all road car, intended to steal a chunk of the prestige and glamour enjoyed by Ferrari, Lamborghini and other Italian exotica manufacturers.

Yet it wasn’t until 1976 that the public could buy the first Series 1 Esprit.

The 2 litre DOHC four-cylinder engine (dubbed the ‘907’) used in those early Esprits was in fact a joint development between Lotus and Jensen, finding itself used not only in the first Esprit, but in the Jensen Healey also.

The 907 was based on an iron Vauxhall block, although Lotus made their own alloy version and mated it to an entirely Lotus-designed 16 valve DOHC head.

Some sources have suggested that the combustion chamber design was actually a copy of the above mentioned DFV V8 !

As for the shape and style of the original Esprit, the man responsible is World renowned auto designer, Giorgio Giugiaro of Ital Design fame.

The same individual is still designing cars today and not all of them are luxury Supercars either. He is the man responsible for the original Volkswagen Golf and some of today’s Lexus designs can be credited to Signor Giugiaro.

Back to the Esprit - sadly, the Series 1 cars were sorely underpowered with only 120kW (160hp) on tap.

Consequently, the Esprit did not really compete with the Ferraris, Maseratis and such that it was intended to, and although Lotus did produce several Esprit V8 prototypes, financial problems saw the model remain as a four-cylinder.

The Series 2 Esprit arrived in 1978 boasting wider wheels and a larger radiator, the latter to combat overheating dramas that plagued those early Series 1s. Things started to get serious in 1980 however, when the engine capacity rose to 2.174 litres.

Combined with turbocharging, this saw the power figure rise to 156kW (210hp), and there were a host of other refinements in these early turbo’d Esprits.

Although the shape continued much the same, just about everything in the drivetrain and suspension plus chassis departments was being re-vamped.

Further engine refinements throughout the 1980s saw the power rise to 164kW (220hp) and by now - at last - the Esprit was faster than some of its rivals including the Porsche 911 SC Sport and Ferrari 308GTB.

The Esprit was by now also gaining notoriety as a movie star, appearing in the Bond movies, The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only.

For 1988, the Esprit was completely revised and this is the first year of the Peter Stevens-designed Esprit.

Basically, Stevens softened all those hard 1970s edges and contours, although performance enthusiasts were happier in 1989 when the introduction of charge cooling and Multi-Port fuel injection from General Motors (who owned Lotus at the time) saw the power output rise to 170kW (228hp).

The latter is essentially a form of sequential EFI and replaced the long serving Dell Orto carburettors which, in various sizes, the Esprit had breathed through for nearly two decades.

The engine was by now known as the type ‘910’ and the new Stevens-designed Esprit too became a movie star, appearing in Pretty Woman, Basic Instinct and If Looks Could Kill.

Ultimately, engine and engine management refinements culminated in the release of the 197kW (264hp) S4 in 1994 and the 223kW (300hp) S4s in 1995.

Esprit is now a V8, something Lotus had apparently wanted for the model for nearly twenty years. At long last the financial situation is such that the V8 has been realised, thanks to the Malaysian Proton group who now control Lotus.