The first production Lotus Esprits (Series 1 cars) are the rarest, with only a little over seven hundred manufactured. Built in an era when emissions controls were mostly a US thing, the formula of a lightweight mid-engine two-seater with a normally-aspirated DOHC 2.0L four-banger didn't translate well to the American market.
In European trim the car featured a brace of two-barrel Dell'Ortos and made a claimed 160 horsepower, but the smog-reducing U.S. intake setup had a pair of single-venturi Zenith Strombergs, which gave it a twenty pony haircut. Federalized Esprits could barely duck under the 10.0 second mark in the dash to sixty, but it was the Malaise Era, so what're you gonna do?
This one was photographed in March of 2019 using a Fujifilm XF1.
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