Ready for business: Lotus Turbo Esprit

What’s it like to be the chairman of the board? To be responsible for making key decisions. For wielding power. To have the knowledge that one false move could lead to disaster.

This 1983 Lotus Turbo Esprit is your opportunity to live the chairman dream. Powerful in the 1980s, it spent many years in decline, its glory days behind it. Today, under the direction of new leadership, not to mention a substantial cash injection, its power has been restored.

It’s for sale as a going concern. Bids are invited, but it’s valued at between £37,000 and £43,000. At the time of writing, bidding has reached £30,000. More investment is required.

The car was owned by David Wickins, former chairman of Lotus and founder of the British Car Auctions (BCA) group. Wickins died in 2007, but his obituary suggests that he led a rather colourful life.

The Life of Riley

He built BCA into a multi-million-pound business, having conceived the idea in 1946 when he placed an advert in a local paper for his Riley Lynx. The first public auction was held in a rented field in Surrey, with vehicles sold as seen.

“By and large the motor trade is less dishonest than the legal profession,” he once said of the car dealers that generated his income. “I’d rather take the word of one of these gypsies than a solicitor or a jeweller.”

His route into the Lotus position began when BCA sponsored Mark Thatcher’s short-lived racing career. David Wickins was a friend of Mark’s father, Denis Thatcher, but it was Mark who introduced him to Lotus in 1983.

Lotus was a company in dire straits. Not only was the business haemorrhaging cash, founder Colin Chapman, who had died a year earlier, was embroiled in the DeLorean scandal.

Learning the ACBC

With Wickins at the helm, Lotus sailed into calmer seas, before the business was sold to General Motors in 1986.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Wickins courted controversy by ditching the famous yellow and green roundel and replacing it with a black oval. He even ditched the ‘ACBC’ symbol, a reference to Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman.

The 1983 Lotus Turbo Esprit for sale via The Market wears a gold-on-black Lotus badge. If you don’t like it, you could remove it. That’s one way to honour Colin Chapman’s ‘simplify, then add lightness’ philsosphy.

The car spent many years languishing in a barn, before the vendor spent £16,000 restoring it to its former glory. There are just 31,000 miles on the clock. You can read about the details via the auction listing.

Anything but bored

‘Keep the door from the wolf!’ proclaimed the press advert for the Lotus Turbo Esprit in 1981. The copy highlighted a 0-60mph time of 5.5 seconds and a top speed of 152mph, with fuel economy of 28.4mpg.

Those figures trounced the contemporary Ferrari 308 GTBi. A second quicker to 60mph, 7mph faster flat-out, significantly more economical, and much more affordable. In 1981, the Turbo Esprit cost £16,900, while the Ferrari cost £21,800.

“If you already have fine cars and you need a super-fast machine for high-speed Continental dashes, you need the Lotus,” said the 1981 Ferrari vs. Lotus twin-test in Car magazine. “There is no denying that it does, by a hefty margin, offer more capability for the money.”

The final line of the review: “You must have the Ferrari.” Right.

According the Hagerty price guide, you’ll pay between £31,800 and £65,100 for a 1981 Ferrari 308 GTBi. You could end up paying a similar amount for this Lotus Turbo Esprit.

Whatever, as the car’s new chairperson, you’re likely to be anything but bored.

READ MORE:

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