Used blue hylomar since the 70s ,borrowed from the R.E.M.E at Scarborough Barracks Doncaster 🤣🙏💯🇬🇧

Yes I agree, caution where you put silicon, Hylomar is great!

I'm surprised the customer had to pay for the repair, especially since the work was done by a dealership.

That color is fantastically beautiful.

Any non "safe" colour looks great IMO. Too many grey white & black cars about. Who on earth would buy a car the same colour as Tarmac???!

I have 90 esprit se does the coolant resivoir has an overflow drain tube

I've read of people putting a Boxster gearbox on it and then upping it to 500+bhp. Sounded like it was epic.

@@ChristianRThomas A Boxster box, I'm surprised it would handle 500+, why not a 911?

@@davidpeters6536... Because the 911 is rear engined but the Boxter is mid-mounted.

@@howardmckenna Correct. The Porsche Boxster box is the same as a 2wd Audi box, tho ' variations exist to make life difficult for those doing swaps. Jeff of YT channel 'Homebuilt by Jeff' put an Audi V8 from a 4wd car in his Boxster and retained the Boxster's box

They should have used the Tremec T5 manual like TVR. They handle 5L supercharged version of that engine. The trouble the TVR's were their ladder chassis & out riggers. It will still cost you £20-25K for a 20 year Old Chimera. The 500 Griffith will set you £30K+ for a Good one.

Nick The Engineer -- surely you can share what the "huge project' was back in the day... I worked in telecomm and can say stuff like that with the way that technology has developed and launched over the past couple of decades.

TELL ME WHAT THE THING IS SO I DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THE FULL VIDEO. Video man get to the point. *** Edit... Ok. Getting the gearbox wouldn't make a difference since supercars are all about brand name deception to fool the masses. Ferraris and Lambos have done this for ages. Bad quality, zero reliability, perfect for your typical millionaire without a clue, who is only chasing after something that is shiny and has a badge to show his status to his mates and those below him. Lotus knew this which is why they didn't bother.

@Spectacular Spectacular This is not the *Elise*. That is a completely different model.

In Australia here we LOVE Lotus. Only the local red 1982 Lamborghini Countach S gets as many gawkers as the blue metallic Exige. In tiny Newcastle NSW Australia.

I've been studying lotus lately. I will have the new eletre but what would u say is your fav 80s and 90s version and why if u don't mind me asking

Lotus should have tried a Ford/De Tomaso Pantera parts bin for a good cheap mid-engine friendly gearbox, heck, they might not have even needed to pay to have them built under license if the patent had expired by the late 1990s.

Just imagine that 500 bhp and a proper gated manual it would have been a Diablo basher

clearly they shouldve opted for an off the shelf V8 and spent the dosh on a new tranny

Renault told Lotus exactly how many gearboxes they were going to produce and that number determined the number of cars that Lotus was going to produce. No extras for the parts department!

Well, by the early 2000's the "no pop up light" laws were coming, so I'm glad it died and didn't get some hideous redesign.

Bullshit.

This is good advice for any car. Royal Purple or Redline gear oil always make a manual transmission feel better.

@@lebojay Golden Spectro works wonders in German sportomatics.

Chafed my Corolla 6mt to royal purple and it was the best move I ever made. Shifts are noticeable smoother and easier. It’s wild how purple it actually is.

yes ,what about the Europa ,i can´t fit anymore on it but it was a great car

There are... "advisers" in each and every community, which force the leader to make this or that choice. If they don't follow, nobody can see them anymore.

There are not many cars that would make me want to sell my 996 turbo, but a 355 is one of them

@@sidewayssam the F355 is wonderful. For me, it's peak Ferrari, with the right amount of power for road use and the feel, character and noise IS Ferrari for me. Hence had it 14 years already. A keeper.

@@richardcarter1000 it is an itch i need to scratch. Though without selling my turbo, will take some saving

Yes, I would agree with that. I reckon that having spent so much on the engine, I think changing the gearbox would have pushed the price closer to Ferrarri territory, but it's not a Ferrari so they would have probably lost even more money as a result of fewer sales. People would have just bought the Ferrari.

My Astra 2.2 Sri would do 145 mph back in the day

@maxmax MEGALOLZ

If that was in dash.. it is probably way off . And much slower

I suspect other components would become unreliable so they would have had to beef more than just the transmission to handle 700 hp and they just didn’t have the budget.

A British car with 600hp is a time bomb not a super car 🤣🤣it would’ve been brilliant to drive “briefly”.

600HP totally feasible, BUT gotta beef up the Tranny!!

... if only you could get an engine to produce a reliable 700hp that you speak of in the 90s

@@bobolulu7615you could boost a L98 Corvette engine to that….. the one that was designed by …Lotus….

Super tune the engine to it's 500hp spec and swap the transmission out with one from a Pantera maybe?? If it'll fit...maybe a more robust gearbox just won't quite squeeze in there.

Porsche Boxter 6 speed transmission will fit in the Esprit

There are transmission upgrade kits out there.

Good to know that there's transmission upgrades available for the Esprit.

You don't need to swap the transmission, you just need to replace the input shaft which many owners have done. There is a enthusiast who redesigned the input shaft into a single beefed up piece with a stronger fifth gear at the end. It's been tested on cars with 900hp and so far it hasn't failed. Now this means that failures get passed down the line to the gears themselves, but you only need worry about that when you get passed the 500hp mark.

lol...brutal

It wouldn't have been Geremy Clarkson by any chance, that man who is up there with Colin Chapman in terms of car design and engineering imo. 😂😂 What a wanker. Now driving Tractors which are far more suited to his abilities. Guess France can't play football either. 😂⚽

@Brian Thomas... extra brutal...☠️

@@TheLRider No it was either Car and Driver, or Motor Trend stateside. It was a review head to head of the Esprit and its competitors.

That's exactly right about it not being as temperamental as a lot of other mid engine cars, you don't have to pray every time you let off anywhere near a corner, lol.

Yup. The S1 is unquestionably the prettiest of all Esprits. Somehow everything was always downhill thereafter, though at a fairly shallow slope. Then people (and Lotus) lost faith in the Giugiaro shape and thought it looked dated. Not a view many would share today.

@@ChristianRThomas Agreed. It's sometimes hard to see which of the current (overdesigned) cars will be classics in the future. Will the shape of the model S or the Taycan become as iconic as the wedge of cheese in 50 years from now?

Ah thanks Bill!!

Are you kidding me. You go on and on about the major problems with this car and why it didn't dominate the 90s. You talk about the 355 like it was a God and conveniently forget about even mentioning the true super car killer of the 90s the Acura NSX. In 97 I looked at the lotus and the NSX and bought the NSX. It was the easiest decision I ever made. The only place your lotus won in comparison was it was a few ticks faster but a few go fast goodies I got for Comtech through Acura that was pretty much solved. I've had my 97 since and except for normal wear and tear items it's been trouble free. Hey the lotus was a pretty car. But with an Acura dealer all over Atlanta at the time and the US at the time service was never and issue and it still isn't. I don't usually like to troll car videos but I had to jump on yours. There was a automotive altering Super Car in the 90s and it was the NSX.

Absolutely LOVE the S4 - and yep - I was at Silverstone, at a car show, decades ago, and there was a Corvette in the 0-60 sprint staging area with me - he had the bonnet / hood up while waiting , and I saw the huge 'Lotus' engine in it, thinking it was a mod, but he explained that it was factory standard! I also saw with the bonnet up, that the Corvettes had insanely wide tyres that go waaaay into the body / engine bay area... Nice.....

Nick The Engineer (Commented above) said he was an engineering placement student at Lotus Powertrain. He'd know if anyone.

Lotus Corvette made 375 hp which would have elevated the Esprit to top tier supercar status. Yup, a missed opportunity.

@@encinobalboa the 1993 added another 30 HP to that

Make sure you use a decent high grade, heat treatable steel for the shaft.

Problem is there are not that many transaxles to choose from, and Lotus obviously made the car around the powertrain so it could potentially mean chopping and changing everything.

@Mark Green Oh I'm sure it would, but if there is something that will just about fit, seems a potentially better solution than preparing to rebuild an old and relatively weak gearbox every few years. Especially for those who are considering more power. It's not like there's a custom monocoque to preserve either - tube frame chassis so can imagine it being a lot "easier" to fabricate without touching any of the suspension points or structural integrity than some of the engine swaps I've seen over the years. I'll include quotation marks, as I have none of the skills to carry out such a conversion, just wondering out loud.

There are actually a couple of transmissions that can be fitted in the Esprit V8

Audi A6 box fits

A good old bullet proof toyota celica box?

Thanks buddy! Hope you have a great Xmas!

@@Number27 you too pal

Not when the company was owned by GM!

And mine is even better, having been completely rebuilt and professionally set up. It handles like it's on rails.

Thank you chap and happy Xmas!

I was thinking the exact opposite on the colour

I think the interiors are much better than people give them credit for and the driving position is to die for. I never much liked that rouched leather in the S4 though, and it looked especially bad with age and with a cream interior. It just ended up looking filthy. What will work in that car, which didn't in the G cars or the Excel of the period, is the heating fan. That really was a pathetic thing.