Lotus pushed upmarket and away from its kit-car roots in the 1970s, launching the Elite, Eclat and Esprit coupés, designing its own engines and upgrading its production techniques to match.
“In the sort of markets Lotus is in today, design brilliance is not enough. Quality of construction and reliability must match the exotic alternatives from the bigger manufacturers,” we said as we headed to Hethel to see how the latest Lotus cars were made.
The machine shop was “clean, tidy and efficient, thanks to a series of modern tape-controlled machines” (computers). Only one alloy casting wasn’t done there.
In the engine shop, ‘907’ units were built up by hand, the spec differing per market. Valves had recently started to be ground in by hand to improve reliability. Each engine was then run on a test bed for 75 minutes, attached to its (also hand-built) gearbox.
Metal sheets and tubes became chassis in the fabrication shop, then were sprayed with a rubber compound to protect against rust.
The Elite and Eclat bodies were made by pressure-injecting resin into vacuum moulds; the Esprit bodies by the old way of laying up material into open moulds. Each chassis was mechanically built up and had an interior fitted before a body was fitted on top.
The final-assembly mechanics would test the car on track before giving it to quality-checkers and subjecting it to an emissions test. Lotus still ‘hand-builds’ sports cars, but the complexity of them and the sophistication of Hethel’s production has come a long way.
Our insightful interview with Lotus boss Colin Chapman
As Lotus confidently grew in the road-car market (albeit still on a small scale and a shoestring budget) and enjoyed another period of big success in Formula 1, we interviewed the man who had founded the firm as a student just 31 years prior.
Could somebody replicate Colin Chapman’s story? “I don’t think it would be impossible,” he said. “I was helped by the times; just after the war, everything was new, business was starting again and everything was a lot more fluid. But there’s plenty of scope for young people who work hard to start a business now. It’s just that there aren’t enough engineers – or well-trained people – about.”