Cinematic Beauty: Lotus Esprit

by Gunnar Heinrich ::: img via IMCDB ::: Lotus Esprit

TEAM Lotus had to have counted itself lucky.

For years, Hollywood saw the Lotus Esprit as the iconic English sports car. Not one, but two James Bond films – The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, Basic Instinct, and Pretty Woman, what other car that’s not  a VW Bug or Ford Mustang gets top Hollywood billing in Blockbusters spanning three decades?

The Esprit was something of a British take on Ferrari. Four cylinders -then eight, turbocharged, leather and wood, clean Giugaro lines at first,  then complicating updates that featured air intakes and spoilers; it’s easy to see the appeal for the Anglophilic sports car enthusiast.

But what, specifically, was the Esprit’s appeal in Hollywood’s critical eye?

Why did the white Esprit so aptly match the dark enigma that was Sharon Stone’s sultry femme fatale in Basic Instinct? Why the high tech Lotus, and not, say, the classic Aston Vantage for Roger Moore’s Bond? And when Julia Roberts had her career making introductory scene with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, it was behind the helm of anotherEsprit.

Pretty obvious, actually. Esprit represented the exotic without the baggage of being obnoxious. Fast without exercising brutish  strength – the Esprit like its character-drivers executed power with relative cunning.

Take that cerebral character and cross it with the eye-pleasing, classic sports car wedge, with alligators-in-the-bayou pop-up headlamps (de rigeur of sports cars from the 80s through the 90s) and you have the winning formula that won the Esprit our affection and Hollywood’s attention for far longer than most of its able competitors.

For a plucky car maker from Norfolk, team Lotus was lucky.