1998 Lotus Esprit V8 GT Coupé

Registration no. L90ESP Chassis no. SCCDA0826WHC15513 Engine no. LL918980329958

Odometer reading: 37,597
MOT: 31/10/2022


*The 18th Esprit V8 GT built for the UK market
*37,597 miles from new
*One of the nicest we have seen
*Factory Afterburner back end

Among the longest running of post-war sports cars, the Esprit first surfaced as a Giugiaro-designed project car at the 1972 Turin Motor Show. Deliveries of the production model commenced in 1976. The Esprit retained Lotus's trademark backbone chassis but unlike previous designs employed front and rear sub-frames to support the suspension and engine/gearbox unit. Lotus's own 2-litre, 16-valve, four-cylinder engine provided the power while the five-speed transaxle was sourced from Citroën.
The Esprit metamorphosed through several series over the next two decades, gaining a new, more rounded, in-house body design along the way, before the model's ultimate expression - the V8 - arrived in 1996. Light and compact, the 3.5-litre, 32-valve engine produced 349bhp, an output sufficient to propel the Esprit to a speed of 175mph and on to the front rank of contemporary supercars.
Its accompanying Lotus Certificate of Vehicle Provenance confirms that this car is the 18th Esprit V8 GT built for the UK market and the 5th out of 12 1998 models finished in yellow for the UK. One of the nicest of its kind we have seen, 'L90 ESP' has covered only 37,597 miles from new and comes with its stamped Service Sheet. There is a gap in the records from 2006 to 2018 (covering 14,000 miles), though there are invoices issued between those dates and clearly some re-commissioning was undertaken in 2018. The invoices are from Christopher Neil, Paul Matty Sports Cars, and Oakmere Motor Group, all Lotus specialists. MoT'd to October 2022, the car also comes with its Lotus Service Notes Folder for the Lotus Esprit.