The Lotus Esprit made its debut on the Ital Design stand at the Paris Motor Show in early October 1975, at a time the Norfolk marque needed it most. One of the many times.
The marque had the Elite, a wedge-shaped mini supercar, but it was niche. It needed a mass-interest sports car. Ital Design, Giorgetto Giugiaro’s design studio, had just the answer in its archives – a concept seen in public as long ago as 1972. Even the name was the same.
And so the Esprit was born, bearing a two-litre four-cylinder twin-cam shared with the Jensen Healey. At the Scramble on Sunday 5 October, 50 years and two days after its reveal, the Esprit will be celebrated with a collection of models through the years.
And of those there have been many. No Lotus has lived longer, finally ending production after 29 years and four generations in 2004.
The original Esprit, Giugiaro’s first glassfibre design, lasted three years and was quickly immortalised by James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. The S2 was a cleaner, neater design, and gained a turbo in 1980 – good enough for a double outing in its own Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.
The S3 was just a year away, further evolution rather than full-blown revolution. That would have to wait until the end of the decade and the skills of Peter Stevens and the X180. The softer-edged S4, the ‘Stevens Esprit', arrived in 1987. Not a clean-sheet design, but a thorough modernisation nonetheless.
Midway through the 1990s, Julian Thomson – who would soon create the Elise – facelifted the X180 with new bumpers and rounded off more of the edges, and added more flare to the wheelarches.
It adopted a V8 and went to Le Mans, in GT1 form, and was reined back in only slightly for a hardcore stripped-out road version as the Sport 350.
Its life well lived will be celebrated at the Scramble on Sunday 5 October.