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y o u r c a r | y o u r A u t u m n 2 0 1 0


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SUPER

MOD ELS

032


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ESPRit


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ESPRitLotus most iconic supercarreturns with styling and

technical innovations everybit as breathtaking as theGiugiaro-designed Esprit

unveiled at the Paris MotorShow 35 years ago. Low,wide, intense, and purpose-ul, the Esprit looks like its

breaking the speed limiteven when waiting or thelight to change. The rontand taillights, set threedimensionally, appear to

be oating part o thesophisticated design themecommon throughout thisrange. Its highly original

daylight openingsthe body, and thelook like somethina superbike. The V8 mid-engined tw

is distinctive andinside and out, intproportion, symmand style.

Star Power >


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ELanThe Elan, the heart o therange, will deliver best-in-class perormance or amid-engined two-seater,competing with the Porsche

911 and Audi R8. The in-novative combination oconcave and convex sectionsproduces a tense, muscularbody, the hindquarters o

which were inspio the most iconiccars ever designe79. The result is alightweight sport

the taut lines o aInside, the cockpocused, ergonomwith contemporasync with the rak

Seduction >


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ELan


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ELitEThis 2+2 ront-enginedsupercoupe representssomething o a shock in theLotus lineup: Though powerul,luxurious grand tourers like

this are a staple o Britishautomotive cratsmanship,Lotus ocus has previouslybeen on eatherweight

two-seaters. Summthe carmakers corethe Elite is lighter thcompetition rom AJaguar, and Bentle

and elegant, the GTsome DNA with thebut mated with a p5.0 V8 to pitch it he

Sophistication >


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ELitE


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ELiSEDesigned or uncompro-mised driving pleasure, the2-seater is built around itspilot. Compact and agile, itswailike weigh-in encour-

ages high-perormancerom its mid-mounted

our-cylinder I4 2engine. The Seriwas launched 15and until now havery little. With t

model, it seems skipped a generause o contrastinsuch as carbon a

Purity >


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ELiSE


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sty

Licensto

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Hw Lus hif gRgr Bkr bm h w

ulikly mvi sBy Jsh Sims

007S SecRetWeapon

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L o t us m o m e n t s

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S i t t i n g i n a t - S h i r t a n d S h o r t S u n d e r

the veranda o his holiday home in Cartagena, Spain,Roger Becker would seem to make or an unlikely

secret agent. Recently retired ater almost 45 years

as Lotus chie test and development engineer, he is

now licensed more to chill than to kill though he

still points out how the pillars in the balustrade sur-

rounding his Spanish sun terrace are not quite per-

pendicular and wonders how the awnings might be

extended and angled to maximize the shade. With

the ever-present sea view and a brand-new boat on

order, though, lie has moved into an elongated de-

celeration; his ip-opped oot is well o the pedal.

Make no mistake, though: This is the same mild-

mannered man who ought o machine-gun fre and

out-drove gigantic, metal-toothed villains. It was

Becker and his team under the direction o Lotus

ounder Colin Chapman who devised the Excel, the

Elise, and Beckers legacy, the new, acclaimed Evora,

rom frst discussion to fnished car in just two and a

hal years. It was al so Becker who, about 35 years ago,

devised the Esprit the l egendary vehicle that may

just be the most memorable car in movie history.

During the flming o The Spy Who Loved Me, you

see, Becker was asked to don a wig and one o RogerMoores suits to drive that Esprit. Not just any Esprit,

either, but rather the white, wedge-shaped growler

that fred rockets, laid mines, squirted cement, trans-

ormed into a submarine, and put its makers frmly

among the ranks o legendary autos.

It ended up being seven weeks o shooting i n Sar-

dinia or about seven minutes o screen time, the ac-

cidental stuntman says. But they were a great seven

minutes. (In act, Becker had only one accident dur-

ing the flming when he reversed one o the two

production cars into a ditch.) How many people can

claim to have been given an opportunity to drive in

a flm like that? Becker wonders. The cast ended

up calling me 006-and-a-hal. I never quite made it

as 007.

Thats not the only aectionate nickname Becker

achieved during his remarkable career. While he

was pioneering Lotus engine- and transmission-

development work with Toyota, he was reerred to

as Becker San around the actory. Nor has he been

quite able to leave all that behind him just yet: Becker

still consults or Lotus and a handul o other majorcar companies. You can take the boy out o Lotus,

but its very hard to take the Lotus out o the boy,

he says.

Such is Beckers living-legend status with Lotus

that the company is launching RGB Special Editions

o the Exige and Elise in his honor. O course, Mr.

Lotus is getting one himsel, set or delivery later this

year, having been rendered to his rather particular

specifcations. Ive always been into black-on-white

or cars white exterior with a black interior, he

says. Its the eye-catching purity o the look. And Ive

always wanted a Lotus with a black nose badge, but

theyve always declined, saying it was only or use in

memoriam. Well, now Im getting one at last on the

Special. Its kind o in memoriam o Roger Becker, I

guess o his passing . . . out o Lotus.

Brand image has become so important in the automotive

industry. How huge o a coup was it to get Bond into the

Esprit 35 years ago?

I think there were two big pushes that put Lotus on

the map: Formula One, which was very dierent

then it was very much about the willingness o the

drivers to be given an idea by the likes o Colin Chap-

man and then being prepared to go out and try it. By

trade, Chapman wasnt even a mechanical engineer.

He was a civil engineer with simple mantras: add

lightness and dont use two components i one can

do both jobs. But the other big push was the Bond

flm. That just lit up the company. It made the Esprit

a premium product. Lotus had always been big with

racing ans, but now it was a l iestyle choice, too. The

Esprit became a status object.

It must have cost the company a ortune.

We were actually the last company to get one o our

cars into a Bond movie without paying or it and

it only happened because somebody tipped a wink

to our PR guy! The PR guy was told about a parking

space outside the movie production ofce, and Ken

Adam [the pioneering Bond production designer]

was encouraged to keep looking out o the window at

this Esprit. Adam wanted a car that looked uturistic

and looked like it would work underwater. You just

cant imagine that with an Aston Martin, or any big

brick shithouse o a vehicle. Chapman, o course, saw

the Bond flm as a perect test or the car in the higher

ambient temperatures o Sardinia, where the driving

scenes were shot.

Did you plan on becoming a sort o instant stunt driver?

The stuntman told me that he didnt usually do stunt

driving so I had a week to get him driving a Lotus

as you can drive a Lotus. And he just couldnt get it. He

was more about swinging a car rom side to side and

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th s dd u llig m 006-d--hlf.I vr qui md i s 007.

Becker in between takes inPorto Cervo, Sardinia, duringshooting in 1976

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having the squealing-tire sound eects dubbed on

not making them squeal or real. There was a simple

scene when Bond has to drive ast up a road. While

they were shooting, the stuntman would just oor the

throttle and over and over again, it didnt look or

sound right. Once they asked me to bring the car up

or a certain shot, so I drove as was natural or me: I

screamed up the road, and the assistant directors were

jumping up and down, yelling: Thats how we want it!

Why cant we get him to do the driving? So I did it.

And along the way, you turned into Bond in more ways

than one.

Well, I had to dress like Roger Moore or some o thescenes I wore a wig and was pinned into a suit

that didnt ft me. Roger was much taller than me, so

I looked pretty ridiculous. But the stunt coordinator

insisted that he negotiate the scenes and the payment

or the work; it was his one condition. So at the end o

each day I brought my ticket to the cashier, and I ended

up with a lot o money or the driving. Everybody on

the set said, Dont get caught trying to take the cash

across the borders on the way home. I bought loads

o presents, but I still had piles o money let. I ended

up taking the passenger seat out o one o the cars and

lining the seat with all these wads o lira notes beore

I drove it home. It was all an adventure. How many

people get to all into an experience like that?

How difcult were the stunts you were perorming?

Most o it was just driving ast, which is really not

all that hard or me. But it was certainly memorable

how couldnt it be? Me in an Esprit driving under

a helicopter ying sideways, explosions going on all

around me and machine-gun eects going o, the

ull downward thrust o the helicopter and a 300-

oot drop-o into the ocean on the other side o me.

I didnt get to do the most a mous o the stunts to

drive o the end o the pier. I just got up to the end

o the pier, where a compressed-air-powered Lotus

shell stued with tire inner tubes took over. Watch

careully and you can see that when the car hit the

water, the whole ront was blown o. On the plus

side, though, I did get a good picture o [Bond girl]

Caroline Monroe in her bikini up against the car.

Did the whole experience make you a kind o stunt-

driving expert?Well, I had my eyes opened to just how alse the whole

flm world is especially the trickery o the eects.

The scene in the movie where the Esprit sprays ce-

ment onto the windscreen o the pursuing car? That

was porridge, and it had to be shot backwards, with

me actually reversing down the hill at speed, and the

flm then played orwards. The explosions were just

a bit o steel plate, some Cordtex, cork, and cement

powder. Some people told me to put some earplugs

in because the explosions could be quite loud You

wont inch as much, they said. I thought, Nah, I

wont bother. Then everything went o and it was

like, Jesus! That was harder to deal with than driv-

ing just a ew eet under a helicopter that was or

real, and at times it was damn close.

You werent tempted to take any o Ken Adams ideas

back to the engineering department?

A acility or porridge squirting? No. And Ive never

been that keen on going underwater either, so even

a submarine car wouldnt appeal to me much. Im

much happier on the surace o the water. A car that

turned into a boat might appeal but then again Im

just as happy in a car that simply goes pretty ast.

Now that youre semiretired, do you miss the speed?

Well, I still drive pretty ast. In act, Id scare the shit

out o you. The desire to go ast is instinctive, and a

Lotus just comes alive or me. The whole philoso-

phy o Lotus is that you can become one with the

car. I can still get most cars to go quickly and still

have quite ast reaction times, although o course

they slow with age. Thats your body telling you to

cool down a bit. O course, Im not as ast as I usedto be at some point, sel-preservation takes over.

But I only had one big accident in all those years,

and it was totally my ault. I ended up rolling a car

into a feld with the tire engineer on-board. There

were plenty o close ones, really, but i you dont

have those, youre not pushing hard enough. We

taught our drivers to do power-sliding or drit-

ing, as its now called rom a very early stage.

Colin Chapman frst demonstrated that to me on

public roads. At the time, even I thought that was

taking it too ar.

But surely theres more to test-driving than

speed alone.

I was still very young about 21 when I got my

driving test with Lotus and became one o their test

drivers. These days you have to be 30 beore you

could qualiy or that sort o position its a very

hard world, and the perormance o cars is that

much higher now. These days we take those drivers

we recognize as having an inherent ability behind the

wheel, and then we develop those skills. Most people

use 80 percent o their attention to keep a car on theroad, leaving them just 20 percent to do other things

with. We turn that around, so you have 80 percent to

think about whats happening with the car. That is an

unusual skill. Then again, so is being able to power-

slide round and round a roundabout until the tires

give out.

Josh Simsis an author andautomobile writer who recently

securedan interview with the other Roger (Moore,that is).

Drivig udr hlir gig sidwys, xlsisd mhi gus gig ff, 300-f dr-ff i

h hw uld i b mmrbl?

054 | ie 1 | lotus

Roger Becker with the LotusEsprit he drove in The Spy WhoLoved MeOpposite: RogerMoore, as Bond, knew the valueof a smoke and a martini

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