It's only taken them 30 yearsLotus's long-awaited new Esprit will go into production in Hethel, England, in the first half of 2008. It replaces a car old enough to have starred in a James Bond movie with Roger Moore as 007. That model premiered in 1976 and was last sold in North America in 2004.
The new Esprit will be composite bodied over an aluminum structure made up of castings as well as extrusions and plates. The engine is a turbo V-8, thought to be Toyota's, although there's speculation in Britain it might be a BMW unit. The company's consulting arm, Lotus Engineering, has released renderings of a "possible" supercar chassis and even a complete car, badged Esprit, on its wall calendar last year. Lotus Cars doesn't deny these are early renderings of the real thing.
The car will be built in Britain, though for a time, Lotus's Malaysian owner had investigated building the car in Malaysia. Lotus has a new CEO, but that's unlikely to signal a radical change of direction for the company as he's had the job before. Mike Kimberley ran it after founder Colin Chapman's death and then played emergency-room surgeon to Lamborghini as it came through one of its worst crises in 1994.