What James Bond had to say about the Lotus Esprit
In the book "Bond on Bond" (now available in German translation as "Bond über Bond"), Sir Roger Moore tells the story of the Lotus Esprit, which almost played a leading role in the 1976 film "The Spy who loved me".
The fact that the car was even considered for the movie was thanks to an intelligent move by Lotus PR manager Donovan McLauchlan. At the beginning of 1976, he had heard that production of the next Bond film was due to start at Pinewood Studios and drove an Esprit S1 onto the studio site, where it could not be overlooked. He had carefully removed all brand and type marks beforehand to arouse additional curiosity. Producer Cubby Broccoli immediately picked up the phone when he saw the car, and the rest is history, or so the story goes.
Lotus provided two production Esprit cars, five bodies and two employees for the shoot. The underwater Esprits were built at Perry Oceanographics. The famous scene in which Roger Moore emerges with the Esprit and throws a fish out of the water was obviously not originally planned, but was Sir Roger's idea. Broccoli didn't like the idea at all at first and wanted to cut it out. But he was then persuaded by the laughter in the editing room.
Apparently, the Lotus cars caused some problems during filming because the engines overheated, the batteries discharged quickly and the driver was unable to get out gracefully. In any case, the two Lotus mechanics were kept very busy keeping the cars running.
For the presentation of the film in Cannes, press agent John Willis drove an Esprit from London to Cannes in May 1977. The film team were obviously betting on how far he would get. He did make it as far as Lyon, where he had to call on the help of a garage for the first time. Afterwards, he made it to Cannes under his own steam, parked the car in front of the Hotel Carlton, where it rested quietly with a flat battery. Under the cover of night, a team of mechanics then set about repairing the car.
The later Turbo model was used again in the movie "In Deadly Mission", but for fans it should be noted that a scene in which John Moreno Luigi tries out the gadgets unfortunately did not make it into the final version of the movie.
More about the Lotus Esprit S1/S2 can be found in the detailed vehicle report.
