Lotus Esprit

The Lotus Esprit was a sports car built by Lotus from 1976 to 2004. The Silver Italdesign concept that eventually became the Esprit was unveiled at the Turin motor show in 1972, and was a development of a stretched Lotus Europa chassis. It is held to be among the first of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro’s “folded paper” designs. Originally, the name Kiwi was proposed, but in keeping with the E naming format of Lotus tradition, the name was changed to Esprit. Historically it was able to match or better most of its contemporary rivals’ performance in many areas, which included the Ferrari 308, 328, F355 , and 360 Modena, as well as many Porsche sports cars in a production life that lasted nearly 30 years.