These Lotus-Engineered Cars Didn't Have Lotus Badges

As is typical with these sorts of lists, we start with a gimme: the original Corvette ZR-1. General Motors took Lotus, which was on the brink of financial ruin, under its wing in 1986. It only held onto the company for seven years, after which Lotus was pawned off to the same investment firm that owned Bugatti in the early ’90s. This left the company at death’s door again, and you can rest assured that the looming threat of financial collapse will be an ongoing theme of this retrospective.

But in the late ’80s, Lotus’ fortunes were looking up with an exciting, unlikely project. GM wanted to make the C4 ’Vette into a true giant killer, so it tasked Lotus with designing a new V8 with an aluminum block V8 for the car, called the LT5. With four overhead camshafts and 32 valves, the LT5 produced more power — 375 horsepower in initial trim, 405 HP in later years — than many of its enthusiast contemporaries of the day, from the Mustang SVT Cobra to the Acura NSX, to Porsche’s 964 Turbo. Even the iconic Testarossa, with its formidable flat-12, didn’t have much on the ZR-1 in terms of raw grunt. Lotus also breathed on the ZR-1's Bilstein-designed suspension, a variant of which is said to have first appeared in the Porsche 959. Indeed, the ZR-1 was associated with all the right names; it’s no wonder it went down a legend.

Both generations of Isuzu’s coupe — the wedge-shaped original design seen in the intro slide as well as the later, funkier fastback version shown here — advertised Lotus-tuned suspensions. These models carried “Handling by Lotus” badges ahead of their doors on their front-quarter panels (think Seat’s “System Porsche” branding, except there’s no record of Lotus charging its GM stablemate for the privilege of using its name).

The first Impulse — a Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed hatchback called the Piazza in Japan — was built atop the same platform as the T-Series Chevette. The platform’s live rear axle made handling, well, regrettable, which is where Lotus came in. The British firm transformed the hatch’s cornering potential with tweaks to the springs, dampers and anti-roll bars, extracting the most out of the antiquated underpinnings.

Not all first-gen Impulses were gifted with the Lotus setup. But when it came time for the second act, Lotus’ intuition was incorporated in every car. The 1990-’93 Impulse started as a coupe, and birthed hatchback and sedan variants before the end of its run. Lotus engineers made recommendations on suspension geometry, the location of the trailing arms and what size stabilizer bars to use; they also firmed up the damping and dialed in stiffer spring rates, according to an old print ad unearthed by Hemmings. And if that wasn’t enough, this Impulse was offered with optional all-wheel drive, too. Those models had the coolest decal badging of their time.

For a more modern example of Lotus’ consultancy work, you needn’t look further than the recently discontinued second-generation Hyundai Genesis, which became the Genesis G80 in its final years. Lotus “remarkably” improved the Genesis’ dynamics by analyzing the car’s behavior, comparing it to segment rivals and returning to the Korean automaker with a bunch of recommendations of how to make the big sedan lighter on its feet. And that’s not me talking; those are the words of former Hyundai exec Mike O’Brien.

Here’s how O’Brien explained the working relationship between the two companies to Car and Driver, ahead of the Genesis’ North American release:

We engaged Lotus about a year ago. Their role was to help us do a better job of communicating very subjective ideas to engineers and turn them into concrete engineering change recommendations. They had several iterations of back and forth with our chassis engineering team. The car was actually remarkably improved after that work. [Lotus] could create data and analytics that would show here’s what the car is doing, here’s what the competitors’ cars do, here’s what we think you need to do based on your target buyer and what they want, and then here’s a specific list of things from an engineering perspective to achieve it. Our engineers made all the changes. It was a consultancy role. Lotus did a lot of work in the area of steering, as well, to help us get something that felt much more natural.

Sure enough, our old friend Andrew Collins praised the G80's road manners in his review a few years back, saying it walked “the perfect line between cushy and responsive that you want in a cruiser like this.”

Ignore the Dodge Spirit R/T’s body color-matched wheels, and you’d never suspect the innocuous-looking K-car derivative above had any sporting pretentions about it, let alone that it’d been breathed on by Lotus. The Spirit R/T was defined by its 2.2-liter turbocharged inline-four, which sent 224 HP to the front wheels. That was an unconscionable power number for the day; hell, it’s still very healthy for a compact sedan by modern standards. And it may never have happened without Lotus’ guiding hand.

The British sports car maker collaborated with Chrysler to design the Spirit R/T’s motor, dubbed “Turbo III.” Lotus reportedly designed the heads, and with 16 valves, the Turbo III was the first four-valve-per-cylinder engine Chrysler ever manufactured, according to Allpar. The R/T was quoted with a 0-60 time just under six seconds, and a top speed just a tic past 140 mph. That was good enough to make it the fastest sedan on sale in America during its short run on the market from 1991 to ’92.

The Volvo 480 was the sort of car you wish the Swedish automaker made more of through its history. Youthful, accessible and compact but still full of that unique Volvo charm, the 480 was one of the brand’s many attempts at donning a sportier image. To that end, the manufacturer brought Lotus in to engineer the car’s suspension, which was an especially important job as the 480 was Volvo’s first front-wheel-drive car.

Specifics on how, exactly, Lotus punched up the 480's ability to handle the twisties seem to have been somewhat erased with the passage of time. But reviews of the car — even modern reviews, like this one over at Drivetribe — champion the quirky hatch’s enthusiasm in corners. It wasn’t particularly thrilling in a straight line, and the most powerful engine available for it was a 2-liter turbocharged Renault F-series mill churning 118 HP. But the 480 changed direction eagerly enough, and isn’t that what Lotuses are really about, anyway?

That Opel Speedster up there looks a little off, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s actually the pre-production concept — the Speedster Preserial — that arrived before the midengine convertible’s formal production run began in 2001. The Speedster was sold as the Vauxhall VX220 in the United Kingdom, as part of a symbiotic scheme between Lotus and GM to secure the former’s future, and give the latter a distinctive sports car in Europe for the new millennium. Ironically, this transpired long after Lotus was excommunicated from the GM family.

As you may already know, the Speedster and VX220 were in many ways Series 2 Elises under their fiberglass bodies, constructed atop the same aluminum tub. All three cars were built at Lotus’ Hethel factory. There are key differences between the Lotus-badged cars and their GM counterparts, most notably the engines they use, their safety equipment, the aggressiveness of their suspension tuning and the Speedster and VX220's inclusion of anti-lock brakes. If you’ve ever been curious as to how differently these cars actually feel to drive, Australian site Trade Unique Cars has a very informative writeup that compares them back-to-back.

Long before the Dodge Spirit R/T, Chrysler and Lotus crossed paths on a very different kind of car, for a very different kind of market. Chrysler Europe brought the Sunbeam hatchback to the U.K. in 1977; it divested all its holdings to Peugeot just two years later. The Sunbeam was quickly rebranded as a Talbot, and it was around that time that Lotus’ tuned version of the car was first revealed to the public. Chrysler had contracted Lotus to transform the rear-wheel-drive Sunbeam into a rallying monster, and those efforts were rewarded when team Talbot secured the 1981 WRC manufacturer’s title.

For the roadgoing homologation version of the hot hatch, Lotus gave the Sunbeam its slant-four engine developing 150 HP, chained to a five-speed ZF transmission. A stiffer anti-roll bar and uprated Bilstein shocks improved handling. The result was a meaner, rougher GTI with the drive wheels in the completely wrong place — for a hot hatch, anyway. That’s the highly abridged version of the tale, but I recommend checking out my friend Raph’s article on the Sunbeam Lotus and its rally-winning ways if you’re curious to know more.

You all knew this one was coming. Lotus takes the Vauxhall Carlton/Opel Omega — a completely competent albeit unexciting saloon, as the Brits call them — and makes it faster than damn near anything this side of the Ferrari F40 or Porsche 959. Lotus achieved this with a number of enhancements, crucially by twin-turbocharging Opel’s 3-liter straight-six, while also increasing displacement to 3.6 liters. The six-speed box from the ZR-1 was lifted to do double duty in the Carlton — Lotus knew it well, of course — while the limited-slip differential from the Holden Commodore was thrown into the concoction.

Add in a self-leveling suspension, wider tires and beefier brakes, and it’s little wonder Lotus’ take on a totally unassuming GM appliance became the sleeper sports sedan of the early ’90s. This special Carlton could wave off 60 mph in almost five seconds flat, and nip at 180 mph. One particular gang in the U.K. leaned on the car’s superb performance to do crimes; surprising no one, the scoundrels were never caught.

The original Vanquish owes its chassis to Lotus, who developed the coupe’s aluminum-and-carbon fiber chassis, as well as its suspension system. Again, this is a case where the details are murky, but an old Car and Driver road test comparing the then-new Vanquish to the already familiar Ferrari 550 Maranello makes the cooperation between the two famed British names clear:

We know that the ride and handling experts at Lotus were responsible for developing the Vanquish chassis, which uses some suspension parts from the Jaguar S-type. Lotus’s achievement has been to make a fast and powerful car with a firm suspension that isn’t unsettled by bumps, and it never once bottomed out on our travels. The ride is never jarring and is remarkably comfortable considering its big 40-series tires.

About 14 years later, Aston Martin lured Lotus’ Matt Becker into the fold, following a 26-year career at the sports car maker. He’s served as Aston’s chief Vehicle Attribute Engineer since, fine-tuning machines like the DB11 AMR until they handle exquisitely.

The pitch was too good to resist: Take the specially developed twin-cam 1.55-liter Kent engine tuned for the Lotus Elan, drop it in the Ford Cortina for homologation purposes, and sell it to the masses. That’s the general gist; there was more to it than that of course, as Lotus reengineered the Cortina’s suspension, doing away with the rear leaf springs for coil springs and dampers, while also fitting Girling front disc and rear drum brakes along with a servo. Some steel body panels were switched out for aluminum, too.

The changes were numerous and effective. The hotted-up Cortina, built by Lotus at its original headquarters in Cheshunt, proved a critical darling as well as a sporting success. The likes of Jim Clark, Jacky Ickx and Jackie Stewart steered Cortinas to glory in various touring car series around the globe.

Starting in 1966, Ford chose to take on the responsibility of manufacturing the car itself with Lotus’ engine, while cutting costs in the process. These “Mk2” models are a bit frumpier looking and tend to be passed over in favor of the Lotus-made earlier models, but they were also considered more reliable and refined in their day, according to the historians over at Lotus Cortina Information.