History of the x180
The
New-style Esprit
Taken from Lotus Since the 70s by Graham Robson
In 1987 everything looked rosy for
Lotus. The first prototypes of a new smaller front-engined
car — to be called Elan when launched — had gone on
the road, Group Lotus had made more than £2 million profit for General Motors —
and a restyled Esprit was announced.
The new-style car, coded X180 at Hethel, was launched in October 1987, with deliveries
beginning almost at once. Because this was merely a new bodyshell
on an existing and well-proven chassis, with a new gearbox/transaxle, this was
an excellent, low-investment way of developing a new model. The progress from
concept to production had taken only 15 months.
In October 1987 Lotus
dropped the original Giugiaro-styled Esprit and replacing
it with a restyled car, designed by Peter Stevens. The new car was much more
rounded and every panel and piece of glass had been changed, yet its overall
profile was very similar indeed.
Compared with the now-obsolete and sharper-edged
Giugiaro style, the X180 was more rounded, smoother
and softer than before.
Compare these two side-on
studies, and you should be able to 'pick' one X180-styled Esprit from the
other, though the differences are small. The car above is the Turbo version, complete
with 'Esprit Turbo' badges behind the doors, while below is the normally
aspirated model, which carries its Esprit badges below the rear quarter-window.
Note the 'Lotus Design' badge ahead of the door pillars.
The aerodynamic impression of shapes,
incidentally, can be deceptive. Although the new car looked much smoother than
before, its drag coefficient was in fact slightly higher, at 0.35 instead of
0.34.
Cohn Spooner’s team of designers, led by
Peter Stevens, had solved a near-impossible task with great style — literally.
The aggressively sharp-edged Giugiaro design which
had been truly in vogue in the Seventies but had been outdated by design trends
in the Eighties, was replaced by something more sensuous, more gently rounded
and more sophisticated — yet it sat on the same backbone chassis, with the same
wheelbase and track dimensions.
As with other modem Lotuses, the new
style was designed to be produced in two large halves — top and bottom — mainly
from glassfibre, but with some local Kevlar reinforcement,
using the company’s patented vacuum-assisted resin-injection (VARI) process.
The style was created in-house, at Hethel. Giorgetto Giugiaro, I understand,
was not asked to offer ideas, and probably never even saw the new shape until
it was unveiled.
Two more 'spot the differences' studies
of the X180 Esprit. This is the normally-aspirated model (right), as introduced
in the autumn of 1987, with what was know as the 'open back' body style between
the two sail panels on the rear quarters. While the 1998 model Esprit Turbo
(left), which had a 'glass back' feature between the sail panels, and a
different rear lower body moulding and cooling grills
arrangements.
Although the profile of the new body
varied by no more than an inch from the old at any point, it looked very
different. All key lines were rounded off, rather than razor-sharp, most
details — such as the fuel-filler flap, and the air scoops for the engine bay,
which were in the sill mouldings ahead of the rear
wheels — were much tidier than before, front and rear bumpers were made in
knock-resistant mouldings, and — in spite of initial
impressions — every single pane of glass was a new shape and size. The new body
featured a lift-out panel in the roof, this being either in a Nomex honeycomb material, or in tinted glass.
There were several basic visual
differences between the normally-aspirated and the turbocharged types. Each car
had its own special type of cast alloy road wheel — though the same tyres were shared between types — while the Turbo’s front end had extra driving lamps and a different
front-end air intake. The biggest and most obvious difference was clear from
the three-quarter-rear aspect. Both types of car featured neatly detailed
‘flying buttress’ panels from the rear of the doors to the flip-up spoiler on
the tail, but only the turbocharged car filled in most of that recess with a
large sheet of glass to give what Lotus claimed was a ‘tunnel-back’ feel. The
Turbo also had a different rear lower body, with a carefully-profiled
under-tray/spoiler to act as a scoop to help extract hot air from the engine
bay and the brakes.
Like the last versions of the Giugiaro-styled Esprit of 1975-87, the X180 Esprit had
reclining seat backs. However, as can be seen here, most of the time the seats
would be pushed back hard against the bulkhead, giving no scope for the
backrests to be reclined. Note the fixings for the glass roof panel.
Inside the car there was significantly
more legroom and passenger space in general — but this was still a small
two-seater coupe cabin because there was a limit to what Grand Prix designer
John Cooper would call the ‘Albert Hall’ effect which
could be achieved. Instruments and the panel were new, there was a better
ventilation system — which was sorely needed, as all hot-climate Esprit owners
would no doubt agree — yet this was still not a car in which tall, particularly
well-built drivers could get comfortable.
The X180 Esprit had a new type of
instrument panel and facia, though the general layout
and features were familar. The footwell
package was more spacious than before — but all such improvements were
relative, as it still helped to have small feet and relatively short legs.
Facelifts, in general, do not always
work very well, but the X180 process was in any case much more than a mere
facelift. It was a complete restatement of the Lotus mid-engined
theme, and it worked out extremely well. The designers had worked round the car
in great detail, producing a neater and more integrated solution to almost
every task.
The new car looked so good that it was a
temptation to go back to the old type, criticize slots, flaps, lines and
features and say to oneself: ‘How could we ever have put up with that?’. It
wasn’t heresy, but of how many other Giugiaro designs
would one even begin to be critical?
Though little could be done about the
overall size of the two-seater cockpit — particularly as no changes had been
made to the central backbone, or to the height of the chassis pressings — the
view from the driver’s seat was little different from before. There was a new
and more integrated facia design dominated by VDO
instruments, the roof panel could be removed — though surprisingly few owners seemed
to take advantage of this feature — and improvements had been made to the
ventilation system.
Mechanically the new-shape Esprits were very similar to those of the 1986—7 HC models
which had just been made obsolete — which is to say
that for normally-aspirated cars the 172bhp engine was standardized, while for
the Turbo there were two different types, one with Dellorto
carburettors, the other with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection. There was one major exception —
but only on non-Federal-market cars at first. Instead of the familiar Citroen/Maserati type of five-speed gearbox, Lotus had to find a
replacement that would fit, which was robust enough and suitably packaged.
Because the number of powerful European
cars with combined gearbox/final drive transaxles was increasing all the time,
Lotus had no trouble in finding a new supply. Links with Renault of
The old Citroen gearbox had served Lotus
well and was still available from
There was one other significant
mechanical change, which was forced upon Lotus. When Renault were
developing the new gearbox, they had decided to use outboard disc brakes on
their cars. Accordingly, there was no way that Lotus’ inboard discs could be
fixed to the new casing. The ‘old’ Esprit, therefore, had always used inboard
disc brakes, fixed to a Citroen transmission intended for such a fitting; the
new car had outboard discs for the very first time.
Clearly the Esprit restyle had arrived
at exactly the right moment. Backed by the might of General Motors, Lotus’
self-confidence was glowing as never before, and they had recently acquired
control of the Lotus sales/distribution organization in the
In 1987 a total of 462 Esprits — new type and old type combined — had been
produced, but helped along by the new style this total rose to no fewer than
1,058 in 1988, which was easily an Esprit record. In fact this was an all-time
Esprit record, for although there would be another major new development in
1989, Lotus never again built more than 1,000 Esprits
in a year.In the first half of 1988
The new-style Turbo was a genuine 150mph
car and this, allied to overall fuel consumption of around 20mpg (Imperial),
made the latest car an intriguing proposition. Purists still complained about
the restricted cockpit space, the need for power-assisted steering and the fact
that the car did not have ABS anti-lock braking, but even they could drive the
Esprit faster than almost every other supercar, and
still arrive at the end of a trip with a big smile on their faces
As Autocar testers wrote in April 1988: ‘The Esprit
Turbo has many points in its favour. Searing
performance, a chassis and brakes to match and sensational looks are only part
of it. You also get acceptable fuel economy, a fine ride with very little road
noise and reasonable luggage space for a two-seater
By supercar standards, the
Esprit Turbo is something of a bargain.’