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2002 ESPRIT TESTED
Colin Goodwin has driven every single model of Esprit.
Time to sample Esprit 2002.
It doesn't have to be Italy's Futa Pass, France's Route
Napoleon, California's Pacific Coastal Highway or any other of the world's
great driving roads. Sometimes the great driving memories are born on less
exotic strips of Tarmac. Such as the A285 between Petworth in Sussex and
Chichester!
Menial
I know this road intimately. I know where it is safe to overtake;
where crossing cattle might have turned the surface into an organic skid pan
and where there are hidden turnings and other hazards. And the finest moment
on the A285? Easy. September 1993, the car a bright yellow Lotus Esprit Sport
300. Back then I was 'the lad' at Car Magazine, the junior road tester who
was given the menial tasks on the magazine. Menial tasks like delivering a
brand-new Sport 300 to freelance journalist Roger Bell, who lives in Selsey
on the south coast.
Sure, I'd have to come back to London on British Rail's rattler from Chichester,
but hey, a small price to pay. Esprit nuts get a little emotional at the mention
of the Sport 300, those lucky enough to have driven one, of course. Among
those fans you can include Lotus's own chassis engineers and a large section
of the motoring press. It was something special that car.
Esprit 300
There's a fan in Switzerland who has two of them, a spare
just in case something happened to one of them. How wise. Fast forward nine
years and we're on the A285 in a Lotus Esprit. A very different Esprit to
the one I was driving back in 1993. This silver machine is a 2002 model-year
car fresh out of the factory. A car built as a celebration of the 30 years
between the Esprit's unveiling at the Turin motor show as a concept and
the modern day Esprit.
You'll easily spot the difference between this car and last year's. Most
obvious are the two pairs of circular rear lights that sit in a redesigned
rear panel and the lip spoiler that was previously used on the Esprit Sport
350. They work well, these changes. Best of all, though, are the huge OZ
wheels painted in what Lotus calls "Crystal Titanium". It still
looks fabulous this car. Still stirs the emotions.
Pulse
The car arrived at my place in a covered transporter sent
down from the Lotus factory. I've driven probably 20 different Esprits in
the last ten years yet still my pulse quickened as the lorry's tailgate
lowered and I saw that familiar yet subtly different shape. There's a world
of difference between the Sport 300 and this car.
First off, the 300 was fitted with a 300bhp version (hence the name) of
Lotus's giant killing turbocharged four, whereas this car is fitted with
Lotus' own twin-turbo 3.5-litre V8. We're talking 260 kW(350bhp) at 6500rpm
and 400 Nm (295lb ft) of torque at 4250rpm.
No other sports car feels like the Esprit. In many you feel higher up, even
in a mid-engined Ferrari the feel is quite different. The Esprit's cabin
is more intimate and close. Quite a bit of redesigning has gone into the
latest model's cabin. The overall theme is aluminium and simplicity. Much
better than the carpet and wood trim of earlier Esprits. To me it was a
mistake to overdo the cabin; to try and make such a purposeful sports car
feel like a luxury saloon when it was palpably no such thing.
Turbines Spin
A slow potter through Petworth and out the other side, with
the South Downs ahead of us. Esprit and I overtake a couple of cars that
are making heavy going of a steep winding hill. I'd forgotten just how hard
these V8 Esprits go. There's a short delay as the two turbines spin up and
then a huge bolt of torque that has you grabbing higher gears in quick succession.
This accessible power takes so much of the risk out of overtaking on roads
like these. Fast it may be, but raw grunt is not what the Lotus Esprit is
all about.
Several other cars are this fast, but few steer and handle the way this
car does. The Sport 300 had the best power steering of any car I have ever
driven. Note the present tense here. Still I have not found a system to
beat it and still I use it as the benchmark each time I drive a new sports
car. The new Esprit's steering comes the closest to matching the perfectly
weighted and accurate steering of the Sport 300. And remember the Sport
300 was a racecar that was just road legal!
Esprit is King
It is on these quick, sweeping roads that the Esprit is
king. Previous Esprits suffered from too much understeer, but this one has
just the right amount. The car corners very flat, riding the bumps in a
way that is almost a Lotus trademark. Enter into a corner slightly too hard
and you can feel instantly, through the steering wheel, that the front end
is starting to "push", then all you need to do is feather the
throttle and the front end grips again. It's how a powerful mid-engined
sports car should behave when its driver has pushed it just past the limit
of grip. Behind those gorgeous OZ wheels sit some very serious brakes. If
there was one area in which you could seriously criticise the Esprit in
the past it was in braking performance. Not now. The two-piece 320mm discs
are gripped by four pot calipers at the front and two potters at the rear,
all backed up by ABS. Now you can be confident that your Esprit will shed
its speed as impressively as it gained it. Even at track days.
Roger Bell is still in the seafront home in Selsey. His dog has obviously
aged but he hasn't appeared to. Bell and I swap Esprit anecdotes, of which
we have many, talk Formula One and drink coffee. This time, however, the
train doesn't take the strain. I get to do the A285 in reverse and Roger
Bell is the one left without the fast car.
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