Spring is drawing near (well not really, but it sounds good) and a young man's
fancy of course turns to cars (alright, I know that a young man's fancy actually
turns to quite different things in spring, but we've already admitted that its
not spring; besides, haven't you heard of poetic license?). The car that my
fancy is turning towards is the Lotus Esprit Turbo.
Towards the middle to the end of the summer I may be in a position that I could
afford a pricey used car, and the one that I find most interesting in the
$30,000 range is the Esprit. Unfortunately I don't know very much about current
pricing, and the relative desirability of various years. I do know that they
were constantly improving the car, but I was talking to someone yesterday and
they claimed that there was one particular year that the Turbos went from the
SII chassis to the SIII chassis, and that you absolutely wanted one of the
SIII based cars. Also that originally the halfshaft acted as an A-arm (a la
Jag-yoo-ar) and that this was unreliable in the Esprit. He didn't know what
years these changes were made. Could anyone shed some light on the subject?
As far as price, in the local newspaper asking prices have climbed from about
$30000 for an '84 a year ago to $35000 to $38000 now. I figured that with
everything else under the sun appreciating that more people were forced into
buying newer cars and that the Esprit was a natural choice, forcing used
prices up a bit. (What I mean is that the people who would otherwise have
bought an XKE roadster or Ferrari 2+2 are now buying Esprit Turbos). But,
contrasting this, I just saw an add in Automobile magazine by a dealer in
Florida who was asking $30000 for an '86 and $35000 for an '87. This is
as low as I've ever seen, but I've never looked anywhere that would give
accurate pricing, such as a club newsletter. So does anyone know what
typical selling prices for nice Esprit Turbos are? Can I get a decent
one of the earliest year in which all the real problems were fixed for
$30000 or less?
Thanks in advance, joe
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