A history of Lotus

Esprit. Eclat. Elite. For any petrolheads growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, these names held a certain aura – whether glimpsed among the latest pack of Top Trumps or streaking by on the motorway.

Yes, the 1970s sports car range from British maker Lotus comprised some of the boldest and, frankly, most beautiful models in circulation at the time. We're very fond of that trio of above-mentioned models in particular, and not just because they hail from an era that's right in our wheelhouse when it comes to providing classic car insurance.

But what of the car marque that produced these affordable sporting icons? Where had Lotus come from, and where has it been going since those glory days?

The early years: lightweight, high-speed kit cars

Lotus has long been associated with the county of Norfolk, where it has been based since 1966. Its home is on a former World War II airfield, RAF Hethel, and the test track uses sections of the old runway.

The company's origins, however, can be traced back to postwar North London. Engineers Colin Chapman and Colin Dare founded Lotus Engineering Ltd in 1952, in some former stables behind a hotel in Hornsey. Chapman had been tinkering with cars since 1948, when he built his first racing car. And, sure enough, the company was to have strong racing connections throughout its history.

Indeed, Team Lotus broke away from Lotus Engineering in 1954 to pursue Formula One racing – which it did, very successfully, from 1958 right through to 1994. More on that in a moment.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Lotus cars were marketed to private racers and speed trialists, and those early road cars could be bought in kit form, which would save the buyer purchase tax. However, Lotus kit cars were phased out by the early 1970s, and iconic mid-70s versions like the Eclat and Elite were only available as fully assembled cars.

Racing: Team Lotus

Team Lotus started competing in Formula One in 1958. And success didn't take long in coming, with Stirling Moss driving his Lotus 18 to the marque's first Grand Prix win at Monaco in 1960. Bigger things were on their way: in 1963 the Lotus 25 and its driver Jim Clark took the F1 World Constructors' Championship for Team Lotus.

Clark, incidentally, was a major but all too short-lived figure in the team's early history. Coming within a few laps of triumphing again in 1964, Clark did return to win with Lotus in 1965. However, driving a Lotus 48 in 1968's Formula Two season, his rear tyre failed in a turn on Germany's Hockenheim circuit, resulting in a fatal crash. Providing some small recompense, that year's championship was won by Clark's Team Lotus teammate, Graham Hill.

Later Team Lotus drivers included Ayrton Senna (1985-87), Jochen Rindt (1970), Emerson Fittipaldi (1972) and Mario Andretti in 1978, those last three all winning Drivers' Championships for the team.

By the time Team Lotus entered their last F1 race in 1994, their cars had won an impressive 79 Grand Prix races.

Lotus road cars, part 1: The 1950s and 1960s

Lotus' first production car was the single-seater Mark VI (1952-57). Not designed as a road car, the VI was sold to the public in kit form, allowing buyers to add the engine and gearbox of their choice.

The company's first road-legal car, meanwhile, was the Seven – a small and beguilingly simple, lightweight two-seater open-top. Designed by Chapman and produced from 1957 right through 1973, the Seven perfectly illustrates the Lotus philosophy – achieving high performance through keeping the weight down and the engineering simple.

As a road-legal car that could also compete in some race disciplines, the Seven was very popular. Indeed, after Lotus stopped making the car, Caterham bought the rights – and to this day you can buy the Lotus' direct successor, the Caterham 7, in either fully assembled or kit form.

In the same year as the Seven, Lotus brought out the (first) Elite, a lightweight two-seater coupe with a fibreglass monocoque. Its tiny weight (503.5kg) allowed the Elite to get sports car performance out of its 75hp engine. It was, once again, offered as a kit, which wasn't helping Lotus' desire to move upmarket. Somewhere between 1,030 cars and 1,047 of these first Elites were made.

A little later, in 1962, Lotus found itself with a genuine success on its hands, in the shape of the Elan two-seater coupe / roadster (also available as a very handsome four-seater, the Elan +2). The Elan took a step back from the Elite in terms of conventionality: it still retained the use of fibreglass for the body, but this time used a steel backbone chassis, unlike the Elite's all-fibreglass monocoque.

Sales of the Elan helped to fund Team Lotus' motor racing exploits over the next 10 years, which, in turn, fed back valuable prestige into the road-car side of the business. The Elite had been expensive to build and not a commercial success, leaving the company in a tricky financial situation: the Elan helped Lotus on the road to recovery.

As you'd expect from an elegant, fine-driving two-seater that pretty much traversed that stylish decade, the Elan made its mark on the culture. Diana Rigg famously drove one in The Avengers, while real-world owners included Paul Newman and Peter Sellers.

Perhaps the original Elan's greatest contribution to UK motoring culture, though, was the fact that it served as inspiration for the later, hugely popular Mazda MX-5 roadster – now a rock-solid classic in its turn, and one of our most popular models when it comes to providing classic car insurance.

Lotus road cars, part 2: The 1970s

Lotus had made a reasonably strong start with its road cars – however, by the mid-1970s, the company wanted to move somewhat upmarket. And this, for us, ushers in the golden age of Lotus cars – the Elite, Eclat, and that much-coveted, wedge-shaped slice of British automotive chutzpah, the Esprit.

First from this stable, in 1974, came the second-generation Elite – a very different beast from its featherlight, all-fibreglass, loss-making 50s/60s namesake. With its angular, shooting-brake rear end and long swooping bonnet tapering down to (that mid-70s sporting staple) pop-up headlamps, this new Elite drew a little on the Italian 'wedge' style introduced into early Seventies concept cars like the Alfa Romeo Carabo and BMW Turbo. It was designed and priced, meanwhile, to go up against other low-slung, aggressive mid-70s coupes like the Alfa Romeo Montreal and the Citroen SM.

Unlike its predecessor, this new Elite was a four-seater, and offered such upmarket creature comforts as air conditioning and automatic transmission. What it did carry over from previous Lotuses, however, was that fibreglass body shell, mounted on a steel backbone chassis, which also figured in the Elan. The Elite was also significant in that it saw the first use of Lotus' 900 series of engines.

We just love the Elite's rakish looks – that unexpected, arresting mix of 70s wedge and sleek mini-estate. If you're the lucky owner of one of these cars, we salute you (and we're sure you have it protected with the level of classic car insurance that it undoubtedly deserves).

Just in case those looks weren't to everyone's taste, however, the very next year (1975) saw the introduction of the Elite's sister car – the more conventionally styled, still very beautiful Eclat coupé. That more gentle rear roofline meant a simple trade-off: more practicality, thanks to a bigger boot, but less headroom above the rear seats (the Elite, in contrast, could just about serve as a family car, albeit one that you'd want to thrash around the local track as soon as you'd got the kids safely off to school).

The lower half of the Eclat's fibreglass bodywork was identical to that of the Elite: as well as keeping weight down, those fibreglass bodies meant no rust, something that bedevilled many car marques in this era.

Lotus' halo car: the Esprit

Fun to drive, reasonably practical and frankly gorgeous though they were, the Elite Mk2 and Eclat were still conventional, front-engined cars. Things were shaken up, however, with the next model to leave the Lotus factory in 1976: a mid-engined, eye-poppingly handsome grand tourer, the Esprit.

Designed by Giorgietto Giugiaro (who also dreamed up the DeLorean, various Maseratis, and the first-generation VW Golf), the Esprit carried those wedge looks further even than the Elite – in fact, it was one of the first of what Giugiaro called his 'folded paper' designs, all straight lines, and angles.

The first iteration of the Esprit embodied Lotus' 'performance through light weight' mantra, weighing less than 1,000kg (2,205lb). With its supercar looks (if not quite supercar performance), the Esprit became an iconic sports car. If you're of a certain age and the name 'Lotus' conjures up images of beautiful, rakish sports cars, that's likely thanks to the Esprit. It was a hugely popular design that enjoyed increasingly potent generations until 2004 – though we prefer the more wedge-shaped 70s/80s models to the slightly curvier later iterations.

Sealing its perennial cool credentials, the Esprit even appeared in two James Bond movies – 1981's For Your Eyes Only and, famously, The Spy Who Loved Me from 1977, which featured a custom-built amphibious Esprit that was good for submarine duties.

The 1980s to the present day: collaborations… and an electric future

The following decade would bring perhaps Lotus' most famous joint project, working with Vauxhall to produce the extraordinary Lotus Carlton – a blisteringly quick version of a sensible large family saloon, and the fastest road-going Vauxhall car. With a top speed of 180mph, the Lotus Carlton could match or outstrip a contemporary Ferrari or Porsche – and that combination of insane speed and everyday looks (and affordability) made it a controversial car.

For one thing, the car was frequently stolen, while police complained that (unsurprisingly) they just couldn't catch it. A campaign to have the Lotus Carlton banned in the UK was launched – but failed.

In fact, while the 1970s had been a heyday for Lotus in design terms at least, 1980 saw the form in trouble. Production had dropped from 1,200 cars per year to just 383, due to a range of factors including global recession, a drop in sales for the crucial US market, and a lack of development of that decade’s model range.

Help was at hand, however, in the form of a fruitful collaboration with Toyota. Lotus Engineering helped to develop the Mk2 Toyota Supra; in return, Lotus were able to launch the Excel, as a replacement for the Eclat, and featuring various Toyota components. The savings made here allowed Lotus to sell the Excel, when it arrived in showrooms in 1982, for over £1,000 less than the outgoing Eclat. Lotus Engineering, meanwhile, kept busy on various other collaborations – after the Sunbeam, Carlton and Supra, the company worked on the iconic Sinclair C5 and DeLorean.

1982 also saw the death of Lotus' visionary founder and designer, Colin Chapman, who'd steered the company from two friends mucking about in some old stables to a producer of thousands of successful racing and road cars – and a seven-times Formula One World Championship winner.

The latter years of Lotus' history saw some changes of ownership. By the mid-1980s, the company's new owners including David Wickins, the founder of British Car Auctions, and Sir Anthony Bamford of JCB realised that they needed more capital in order to bring new designs to production. So it was that, in January 1986, most of the company was sold to the US' General Motors.

There were two more changes of ownership during the 1990s: that decade, and its successor, saw a new and desirable generation of more driver-focused Lotus cars, such as the light, agile Elise mid-engined two-seater; its higher-powered sibling, the Exige; and the sinuous, sophisticated Evora from 2008.

The most recent development, in 2017, saw the Chinese multinational Geely acquiring a 51% controlling stake in Lotus, with the remaining 49% acquired by Malaysia's Etika Automotive.

And, bringing you right up to date, in January 2021 Geely announced that they would be working with Renault's performance division, Alpine, to develop a range of electric performance cars. Yes, Lotus will be producing electric cars only by 2028, increasing production numbers from around 1,500 a year to tens of thousands, with Geely and Etika Automotive providing around two billion pounds towards this enterprise.

The iconic Esprit, Eclat and Elite may now be names from a glorious past, but the future of Lotus is looking bright (and clean)…

Show your Lotus some love with classic car insurance

Are you the lucky owner of any of the iconic Lotus models we've remembered here? If so, speak to the specialists at Lancaster about our classic car insurance.

Benefits can include:

• Historic rally cover
• Static show cover
• Limited mileage discounts
• Choice of repairer
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Contact us today to find out more.

Policy benefits, features and discounts offered may very between insurance schemes or cover selected and are subject to underwriting criteria. Information contained within this article is accurate at the time of publishing but may be subject to change.