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The Lotus Esprit is a sports car that was built by Lotus in the United Kingdom between 1976 and 2004. The silver Italdesign concept that eventually became the Esprit was unveiled at the Turin Motor Show in 1972 as a concept car, and was a development of a stretched Lotus Europa chassis. It was among the first of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro's polygonal "folded paper" designs. Originally, the name Kiwi was proposed, but in keeping with the Lotus tradition of having all car model names start with the letter "E", the name became Esprit. ==S1 (1976)== The Esprit was launched in October 1975 at the Paris Auto Show, and went into production in June 1976, replacing the Europa in the Lotus model lineup. These first cars eventually became known as S1 (or Series 1) Esprits. With a steel backbone chassis and a fiberglass body, the Esprit was powered by the Lotus 907 4-cylinder engine, as previously used in the Jensen Healey. This engine displaced 2.0 L, produced in European trim in US/Federal trim, and was mounted longitudinally behind the passengers, as in its predecessor. The transaxle gearbox was a 5-speed manual unit, previously used in the Citroën SM and Maserati Merak; it featured inboard rear brakes, as was racing practice at the time. The Series 1 embodied Lotus' ''performance through light weight'' mantra, weighing less than . The original Esprit was lauded for its handling and is said to have the best steering of any Esprit. However, it was generally regarded as lacking power, especially in markets such as the United States where the engine was down-rated for emissions purposes. Lotus' claim of 0-60 mph in 6.8 seconds and a top speed of may be thought of as optimistic - actual road test times indicated 0-60 mph in 8 seconds and a top speed of around .〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lotus Esprit S1 )〕 The S1 Esprit can be distinguished from later Esprits by a shovel-style front air dam, Fiat X1/9 tail lights, lack of body-side ducting, and Wolfrace alloy wheels. Inside the car, the most obvious indication of an S1 Esprit is a one-piece instrument cluster with green-faced Veglia gauges. The car gained fame through its appearance in the James Bond film ''The Spy Who Loved Me'' (1977) where a fictionally-modified version was featured in a long action sequence. Bond's Esprit car is first chased on road, by a motorcycle, then by another car, and then a helicopter, then converts into a submarine for an undersea battle. The film's Perry Oceanographic-built submarine "Wet Nellie" was bought by American business magnate Elon Musk at auction for £650,000 in September 2013 by RM Auctions at Battersea Park, London. Musk plans to install a Tesla electric powertrain in the submarine S1 and make it able to actually transform from a road-going car to a submarine. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lotus Esprit」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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