Six limited-edition Lotus Esprit classic cars are heading to auction
Guide price tops £100,000 for some of the cars.
Six highly sought-after, limited edition Lotus Esprits are heading to auction.
The classic cars are going under the hammer at online classic car auctioneer The Market, with the guide price topping £100,000 for three of the cars.
More than 10,000 examples of the sports car were built by the British firm, with the first introduced in 1976 and built at Lotus’s Hethel factory in Norfolk.
Sporting the iconic wedge-shaped design popular with exotic car designers of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Esprit shot to fame when James Bond piloted one that could convert to a submarine in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.
The first Esprit going up for sale next week is a 1978 Esprit S2 JPS Edition. JPS stands for John Player Special, which was a tobacco company that sponsored Lotus in Formula 1 around the time the Esprit went on sale.
This example wears a version of the iconic black and gold livery and has driven just 13,600 miles. It has a guide price of £75,000 to £100,000.
Next up is a 1981 Esprit Turbo Essex S3, wearing a distinctive blue and red Essex petroleum livery. It has been extensively restored and has just two previous owners. With just 45 of these models ever built it’s incredibly rare, and has a guide price of £105,000 to £150,000.
A 1994 Esprit Sport 300 with a Camel Racing Yellow paint job and blue Alcantara leather upholstery could also hit six figures, with experts expecting it to sell for between £70,000 and £120,000.
Finally, a 1995 Esprit S4 GT Championship Winners Limited Edition and 1995 Esprit S4S could fetch up to £50,000 each, while a 1999 Esprit V8 350S could sell for up to £70,000.
Tristan Judge, director at The Market, said: “To have secured just one of these limited edition Lotus Esprits for sale would have been fantastic but to be able to offer all six from the same private collection is unbelievable.
“It is a great opportunity for aficionados of this iconic British marque to own the Lotus of their dreams.”
The market’s online auction for the six Lotus Esprits starts on Monday August 23.
