Tag Archives: For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only

Lego Lotus Esprit James Bond 007

The James Bond movie franchise is back to its very best at the moment, being dark, slightly brutal and a bit lonely. Which is exactly as it should be.

In the late ’70s to early ’80s though, the movies were an altogether different proposition, and had become almost a parody of themselves. The one bright spot in this ’70s ridiculousness was Bond’s car; the glorious Lotus Esprit Turbo.

There’s no way the British secret service would have ever selected Lotus as a provider of government vehicles of course, seeing as Bond would have spent more time fixing his Esprit than going anywhere in it, but it made for a very cool movie car. Especially when it was fitted with a few nautical modifications from Q-Branch.

This lovely mini-figure recreation of the iconic ’80s sports car complete with 007 himself comes from TLCB regular ER0L and you can join him on a secret mission on Flickr by clicking the link above.

Wedge

Lego Lotus Esprit

The Lego Car Blog veteran Senator Chinchilla is back, with one of the office’s favourite cars, the brilliant Lotus Esprit. The Lotus though, came from one of the least appetising eras of automotive design. In the late ’70s cars were designed with rulers, and only rulers, interiors were made entirely from nasty grey plastic, and reliability – until the Japanese arrived at least – hovered somewhere between crap and really crap.

Somehow though, Lotus took all this and created one of the most desirable cars ever made. Penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro and his ruler the Series 1 Esprit launched in 1976, featuring a small 160bhp 4-cylinder engine attached to a Citroen gearbox. Not a recipe for speed then, but it looked fantastic and drove brilliantly. And if you were James Bond you could even tick ‘amphibious’ on the options list.

Four years and two series later the Esprit finally got the power it deserved, through the addition of the newfangled turbocharger, and a legend was born. Senator’s Lego model of the S1 is where it all started though, and you can see all the photos of his excellent recreation via Flickr at the link above.