RE: Lotus Poised To 'Twist Key' On Esprit's New V8

[RWD cossie wil]

Mr Whippy said:

I for one, want to be optimistic.

In a world where lots of manufacturers are being complete gays (BMW I'm looking at you), it's nice to see Lambo, Porsche, Ferrari and Lotus going forward with big power big capacity NA motors... them applying these engines and managing to make them work, and be devastatingly effective, proves that resorting to turbo's in high end sports cars ISN'T essential.

Just a shame it's only Porsche retaining the manual gearbox though

Didn't Lotus say their full range would be DSG? Sad gits.

Dave

What's wrong with turbos? Find a better way to get a huge gain in torque & power for a relativly small trade off, and you will be a rich man!

I suppose you would turn down an F40 or 911 GT2 then?

[BSC]

V88Dicky said:

Can't help thinking that the car would be a whole lot more reliable, and considerably cheaper if they just bought crate LS9s at 630+bhp out of the box.



Good luck to them anyways!

I personally would prefer that.

Lotus wants to set-up a dealer network in the UK existing of three dealerships only. That means the customer would be stupid to buy a vehicle with an unreliable engine from Lotus. So if the engine doesn't provide the reliability of the best engines in the market, Lotus will struggle to sell the Esprits.

And: Lotus has set up a dealership in China, so reliability is even of more importance in foreign markets. Nor for the multi-millionaires there, but for the sports car enthusiasts.

[zebedee]

Dagnut said:

Yeah exactly, I was replying to a comment about BMW?

ahh, as you were then (glad you agree though!)

[British Beef]

GREAT NEWS that the Esprit is forging ahead with a NA V8!!

I agree with posts above regarding concern over in house built engine with BHP/ltr to rival Ferraris best!! Ferrari have been doing this with their NA engines for decades and have the benefit of engine evolution, F1 input and vast R&D. Lotus has none of these.

The old Esprit V8 was a great engine and well packaged, however it had weaknesses that should never have made it to production. (Same story with many of TVRs engines)

The gearbox is the other weak link I hope Lotus address - Shame there is no manual option!!!

[zebedee]

British Beef said:

GREAT NEWS that the Esprit is forging ahead with a NA V8!!

I agree with posts above regarding concern over in house built engine with BHP/ltr to rival Ferraris best!! Ferrari have been doing this with their NA engines for decades and have the benefit of engine evolution, F1 input and vast R&D. Lotus has none of these.

The old Esprit V8 was a great engine and well packaged, however it had weaknesses that should never have made it to production. (Same story with many of TVRs engines)

The gearbox is the other weak link I hope Lotus address - Shame there is no manual option!!!

Well I'm sure once Lotus hear about this R&D thing you speak of, they will be on it like a shot and kicking themselves for not doing it before.

[wobert]

BSC said:

Can you please enlighten me on Lotus' experience in designing a really high performance, high revving engine? Or do I miss something? Has Lotus Engineering worked on F1 engines, designed Ferrari or Lamborghini engines?

It depends on your "classification" of high performance engine - road or race?

I think it's safe to say that the engine design group (including design analyis, who run the Finite Element and Computational Fluid Dynamics programs)are probably the most capable of engineers in their field, with a total experience running into 100's of years.

Their capability to design, analyse and develop an engine suitable for the use it's being put to is without question.

Whether they've designed Ferrari or Lamborghini engines is almost irrelavent as their experience goes (or did when I was there) beyond the "mundane". If you take a look on the LE website you will see that their experience extends to multi-fuel engines, variable compression etc.

[BSC]

wobert said:

It depends on your "classification" of high performance engine - road or race?

I think it's safe to say that the engine design group (including design analyis, who run the Finite Element and Computational Fluid Dynamics programs)are probably the most capable of engineers in their field, with a total experience running into 100's of years.

Their capability to design, analyse and develop an engine suitable for the use it's being put to is without question.

Whether they've designed Ferrari or Lamborghini engines is almost irrelavent as their experience goes (or did when I was there) beyond the "mundane". If you take a look on the LE website you will see that their experience extends to multi-fuel engines, variable compression etc.

You haven't answered my question. LE's experience in years is almost irrelevant if they have designed multi-fuel engines for tanks, hover-crafts or else. LE has had a hand in the design and development of most mundane Opel/Vauxhall engines but those are not the refined engines we see from the likes of Ferrari/Lamborghini. AMG is not renowned for extremely high revving engines, so Mr Zimmermans experience will not be of much help.

Ferrari has its own foundry, it's impressive when you walk around the factory and see the robotised machines working on the castings and cylinder heads. IMHO Lotus can't produce the engines themselves as the have not the equipment needed and not the workforce for it.

[harryowl]

BSC said:

Can you please enlighten me on Lotus' experience in designing a really high performance, high revving engine? Or do I miss something? Has Lotus Engineering worked on F1 engines, designed Ferrari or Lamborghini engines?

The Race tuned V8 in the Esprit GT1's was kicking out 575hp from 3.5L

Edited by harryowl on Wednesday 22 June 19:24

[British Beef]

zebedee said:

Well I'm sure once Lotus hear about this R&D thing you speak of, they will be on it like a shot and kicking themselves for not doing it before.

Intelligent remark on a par with a few of the other retards posting on here!!

Front end loading in the life cycle of a pruduct is expensive, time consuming and prolongs time to first production and guess what.... pay back! Hence there exists considerable incentive to minimise and accelerate, ultimately to the detriment of reliability and brand perception.

R & D for a simple new evolution of an engine - time and cost required, any idea ?
R & D for a new engine with 130bhp / Lt that needs to be reliable ??

[BSC]

harryowl said:

The Race tined V8 in the Esprit GT1's was kicking out 575hp from 3.5L

... and not competitive. Later replaced by NA american V8 power.

With regard to 3.5L and 575 hp: BMW had an 1.5L engine that produced 1,500hp ca. 20 years before the Lotus V8. Remember Nelson Piquet in F1?

[mikEsprit]

Kong said:

MASSIVE, MASSIVE respect to Lotus for designing their own lightweight N/A V8.

I'm guessing either Toyota wouldn't let Lotus use the LFA engine or it wouldn't fit in the car? Otherwise it would have been perfect for the Esprit, similarly powerful, lightweight and already proven.

Agree. I really hope they do this. The pictures even look better to me now, haha.

[PaulFontaine]

Well I also read the Elsie and Exige are being dropped for a few years. Personally I found nothing wrong with using Toyota tech it gave Lotus badly needed reliabilty. In my mind if I were creating and affordable supercar and I had a willing partner in Toyota/Lexus I would utilized their LFA v-10 it meets the power criteria and realistically won't over-stress their development budget. It will also serve to assist Lexus in offseing a fraction of it's ten year development cost. I would put that in the top of range Elite and make the Elite the "halo" car. I would then go to the opposite side and create and style a very light, very simple and basic convertible keeping the price in the $30-40k range as a volume leader that still displays all the lotus core values. It could be done and would need a monster power plant if the weight was at the 2300 pound area so maybe something around 220-260 hp would work. Then as they are determined to have a four seater I would put one in play after seeing how the Rapide fairs but well before that I would completely restyle the Evora that is the cars real Achilles heel weather anyone admits it or not. Also the styling of the propose Elite doesnt do it for me it somehow falls flat

[PieterA]

mikEsprit said:

Kong said:

MASSIVE, MASSIVE respect to Lotus for designing their own lightweight N/A V8.

I'm guessing either Toyota wouldn't let Lotus use the LFA engine or it wouldn't fit in the car? Otherwise it would have been perfect for the Esprit, similarly powerful, lightweight and already proven.

Agree. I really hope they do this. The pictures even look better to me now, haha.

It was or is impossible for Toyota/Lexus to do so. They would not only upset current customers of the LFA, it would also ridicule its hefty price tag. So no way back there.

[wobert]

BSC said:

You haven't answered my question. LE's experience in years is almost irrelevant if they have designed multi-fuel engines for tanks, hover-crafts or else. LE has had a hand in the design and development of most mundane Opel/Vauxhall engines but those are not the refined engines we see from the likes of Ferrari/Lamborghini. AMG is not renowned for extremely high revving engines, so Mr Zimmermans experience will not be of much help.

Ferrari has its own foundry, it's impressive when you walk around the factory and see the robotised machines working on the castings and cylinder heads. IMHO Lotus can't produce the engines themselves as the have not the equipment needed and not the workforce for it.

You have don't have to have your own foundry to be competent at engine design / build etc.

When I was there, they used one of the leading foundries in the world for head / block manufacture, British I hasten to add - when there are companies such as these, there is no need to have the capacity "in house" as this carries un-necessary overheads which may not be fully utilised.

Likewise with head and block machining.

Ferrari choose to keep that element in-house as they obviously have the skills to do it in-house, but there are plenty of other parts which will be put out to external suppliers as the skill base is not an internal skill. That in itself is not a bad thing!

It's safe to say that Lotus' design capability is predominently in road engine design. You can class GM engines as mundane, but the technology used in producing them can sometines be cutting edge, primarily beacause the production volumes dictate it.

That said there are individuals there who also have knowledge of designing at higher specific outputs.

As an aside, during my time there I was never involved in a project that had less than 100 hp/ litre specific on a road engine, that wasn't force induction and that was 15 yrs ago.

[anonymous-user]

When you consider the "sea change" in attitude of car buyers towards Co2 / fuel economy over the last year or so, i can't see this changing at all over the next 5 years (in fact, as fuel and tax are likely to increase for "gas guslers" thinks are only going to get worse in this respect.

Compare a BMW 1M and a AML V8 Vantage, both cars get to 60 in round about 4.7sec, but the BMW manages 224g/km vs 299 for the Vantage............. (thats a massive difference even today, in 5years? well, who knows, but it's unlikely to be "ignorable" by most


(and thse figures are reflected in the real world too, with a V8V you struggle to get into the 20's, something a 1M (or 135i) managed with ease)


Whilst currently buyers of £100k+ cars are somewhat immune to co2/fuel economy worrys, that is not going to be the case forever, and i suspect in the automotive arena, forever might be sooner than
you think ;-)


I also know that the challenge of a production 125+bhp/litre engine is in the word "production" not the power output. The real skill, the one that takes a lot of money to get right, is to ensure that you get your engine into production with suitable reliability as well as making the power target. That is not easy, not easy at all........

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 22 June 21:02

[mybrainhurts]

zebedee said:

TheRoadWarrior said:

It sounds great.

Unfortunately it also sounds like a load of nonsense.


The spec list sounds like it was writted by some 6-yr old top trumps enthusiast- brand new V8 stressed-member engine, 600bhp, hub motors, super lightweight, we'll take it racing blah blah.

Never gonna see the light of day.

wrong

Very wrong...gonna going to...

Tut...education today

[otolith]

Let's just be glad, then, that these great engines will still be about a little longer before becoming "the good old days"!

[mybrainhurts]

So, we're looking out for a strange sounding Ultima, come autumn, are we...?

[Skyedriver]

I remember when TVR decided to make their own engines......................

[Tuna]

Skyedriver said:

I remember when TVR decided to make their own engines......................

Good job Lotus never did that then, isn't it, or they'd never be here today to be able to decide to...

These time travelling paradoxes are tough.