15k: Turbocharged Beast: 1989 Lotus Esprit Turbo
The Lotus Esprit Turbo is a bargain supercar on the market today. You can’t touch a Lamborghini or Ferrari for the same price and while the Lotus does use a simple 4-cylinder engine for motivation, its turbo equalizes the performance gap and 99% of the people on the road aren’t going to know anyway….and frankly impressing random people is sort of the point of a supercar – not actual performance. Find this 1989 Lotus Esprit Turbo offered for $14,700 in Irving, TX via craigslist.
The Lotus Esprit looks the part of supercar in any generation, but the Peter Stevens redesign (1987-1993) is our favorite, because it maintains some of the crispness of the earlier design and doesn’t quite become a study in scoops that is the 1994-2004 Julian Thompson redesign.
Behind the driver’s seat is a 2.2 liter Lotus type 910 inline-4, turbocharged and intercooled, good for 264 horsepower and 261 ft-lbs of torque. Zero to 60 is obliterated in 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 159 mph is impressive for 1989.
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Is that a Jackalope icon?
Correct. This is not me and I have no idea who it is, but he is a hero to everyone.
Vince
That thing has been for sale for 6 months now. I'm reasonably local to the area, so if you want someone to check it out I'm happy to, but I can reasonably predict that the results won't be positive.
These are beautiful cars from the outside, but they are really disappointing once you get inside. I "test drove" one in Syracuse, NY a while back. See how the leather on the interior looks really loose? It is. It seems to have kit car build quality inside. They have notoriously difficult transmissions. The one I tried to drive got me out of the parking lot and into a busy intersection where it promptly died and I had to help push the thing out of traffic. I am sure there are good examples out there, but I remember feeling sad that something that looked so fast was so unreliable and poorly built.
if this is the same one, I used to work with the seller. He daily drove it to work. Paint has some clear coat issues on the engine bay area other wise it seems pretty nice. If I had the $ I'd have bought it myself.