Oh, you gotta love this .
Look, Lotus Esprits are very very capable cars, some of them are frighteningly quick.
There are also, however, somewhat, how can I put this delicately, fragile and temperamental.
Now, I have a friend, Rory, who disputes this. He’s owned 4 or 5 Lotus Esprits, and he says they’re perfectly reasonable and dependable cars … as long as you follow the proscribed maintenance TO THE LETTER!! Rory is a Canadian, so for him, being a good Lotus owner was no problem. I tried to explain that for Americans … well, you get the idea.
Anyway, one of the Esprit’s more troublesome areas is it’s engine. In Colin Chapman’s manic pursuit of lightness above all things, he decided that a good way to go was to put in a little four banger and squeeze the bejeebus out of it with a turbo that was cranking out enough boost to pressurise a nuclear submarine.
As you would expect, the engine, although giving prodigious amounts of power form such small displacement had the life span of a grenade.
So, one enterprising guy decided that an engine swap was in order. In this case, out with the four, and in with, drum roll please, an Audi 4.2 liter V8.
OK, now that I’ve stopped my maniacal laughter (and I’m assuming you have too), you got to admit it makes a certain amount of “sense”.
Light, compact, lots of naturally aspirated grunt … like I said, it makes a certain amount of “sense”.
More photographic evidence of the delightful lunacy after the jump.
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