Lotus Esprit V8

The story

Lotus had prepared the Esprit's chassis for a V8 as early as 1980, but the money never came. In late 1993 a small team at Hethel was handed 27 months to design an engine from scratch, and in 1996 the Type 918 appeared: all-aluminum, flat-plane crank, 3.5 liters and 2 water-cooled turbochargers. In the Esprit it made 350 hp. Car and Driver recorded 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds, its 175-mph top speed was independently verified, and those numbers shamed much costlier exotics.

The character changed with the pace. The V8 is the grand tourer of the late Esprits, delivering a long surge of torque beyond 4,000 rpm that makes passing effortless, inside the best-finished Esprit cabin yet. The flaws were real. The Renault-derived 5-speed gearbox carried over from the 4-cylinder cars became the weak link, the extra mass made the chassis work harder through quick transitions, and the low-slung turbo plumbing can corrode badly. Lotus's own engine documents rated the Type 918 far higher in other tunes, so the road car always seemed to be holding something back. Over 8 years, 1,237 V8 Esprits left Hethel.