Can of worms, which is the best Esprit?

[ILoveMondeo]

Good Morning Lotus people!

I'm been humming and huffing about an addition to or replacement for the TVR for a few months, pretty much decided I cant bring myself to buy anything that's not British (for various reasons), which makes the choice a bit easier, Vantage, F-Type, Different TVR, Lotus (and a few outside/left-field choices which I've already discounted)...

Which after much thought, lead me back to the Esprit, it's been ages since I looked at them, but I've always loved the shape, a true classic in all it's guises.

So... Esprits then... From what's in the classifieds they all seem a bit of a bargain. I could run all the way to a minty, late model V8 (there's three lovely looking yellow ones in there now), but that also gets some very nice and some would say better looking earlier cars too.

Leaving the aesthetics aside as that's all in the eye of the beholder, which one(s) are the best to drive? most well rounded fast road cars?

I've a feeling it'll be the Late v8, pinnacle of the models development etc...

Any other thoughts or ideas? I love the thought of an 80's Turbo... concerned about fragility (coming from a TVR owner that's a big concern!)

Are there any specialists in Oxfordshire/West Berkshire (or further afield) I could be having a chat with? (Thinking along the lines of Str8Six for the TVR equivalent, highly regarded and only deal in the best cars)

Finally, what's the current thinking on gearbox upgrades/strengthening for the V8's? I've read a lot of (very old, 6-10 years) stuff on the Internet about potential upgrade paths. Is this still something many are doing? Or is it just a case of "dont launch it"..

Sorry for all the questions.

Cheers

Dave

[ILoveMondeo]

Cool, thank you, some good advice!

Will do a load more reading and browsing of classifieds and get out to see a few in the new year once I've got this house move out of the way, (getting double garage yay! )

Cheers

[ILoveMondeo]

Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions.

It's a potential purchase for next year, so I've stopped watching the classifieds for now, got a house purchase to get out of the way first.

[ILoveMondeo]

GTRene said:

you could also do something like this...

by an older but nice Esprit with a bad engine, put in such as this LS engine etc, upgrade the dash and tunnel (get away with that square dash...) could be very nice (don't look at that steering wheel and gear knob, its a bout the dash/tunnel etc.

http://caral.co.uk/13.html

that way you could have a very fast esprit with lots of reliable power and a better interior then the esprits with the square dash.

Arrrrrgh... This stuff really causes me to have a personal crisis, I've had modded cars and loved them but for something like an older lotus (or tvr) I like to keep them as original as possible (reliability / strengthening is allowed)

That said, the ls tvr conversions are awesome.

I'm sure something like that is too.

Bet it costs a bomb though, I know the tvr conversions do.

[ILoveMondeo]

Haha, stop it with all the links! It's march next year before I can look at this more seriously!

[ILoveMondeo]

Hedgerley said:

That was the infamous 'Lets see if an Esprit can do 200mph' episode. Naturally they didn't seek expert advice or upgrade it properly, for the benefit of 'entertainment' and of course it broke. The BBC got quite a bit of flack from the Lotus community for that one.

It was 5th gear wasn't it? (So channel five getting it in the neck?)