A half-century after the Lotus Esprit made its head-turning debut at the 1975 Paris Motor Show, and just over two decades after production ended, the British marque’s longest-running sports car is taking one final curtain call courtesy of Encor.
The company may be an upstart, but its leadership is stacked. Daniel Durrant, Encor’s head of design, formerly served as the lead designer of the Emira, the last gas-powered Lotus ever and one of the fastest four-cylinder cars ever produced, as well as the 2,011-horsepower Evija Fittipaldi Edition. Co-founder Simon Lane has years of experience working with Aston Martin, most notably on bespoke Q by Aston Martin division. And managing director William Ives co-founded Skyships Automotive, which pioneered Lotus’s infotainment systems.
Their collective goal is to create an Esprit S1 restomod—which most famously cameoed as James Bond’s amphibious submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me—”with the sensitivity, craftsmanship
and capability of the present day, without disturbing the purity that made it so extraordinary in
the first place,” according to Encor.
The most striking change is the body, which is now an uninterrupted autoclaved carbon-fiber shell featuring sharper lines and cleaner transitions than any Esprit before it. The stance has been subtly broadened to accommodate modern cooling and performance tires. Most importantly, the distinctive wedge-shaped front end has been faithfully recreated down to the pop-up headlight housings, which have been fitted with compact LED projects for better illumination.
While the styling comes from the original Esprit S1, the donor car is an Esprit V8, produced from 1996 onward, which provides the chassis and 3.5-liter twin-turbo V8 that’s comprehensively rebuilt with forged pistons, upgraded injectors, and remanufactured turbochargers. The original five-speed manual transmission is also re-engineered in collaboration with Quaife, receiving a stronger input shaft, revised ratios, a helical limited-slip differential, and a bespoke twin-plate clutch to provide modern precision and durability. Braking is handled by AP Racing components, while the steering retains a hydraulically assisted system to preserve the original car’s tactile, driver-focused character.
The resulting Encor Series 1 boasts 400 horsepower, 350 pound-feet of torque, a 62 mph time of 4 seconds flat, and a top speed of around 175 mph, specs that best every other Esprit that rolled out of Lotus’s historic Norfolk factory.
Instead of a technological makeover, the cabin maintains retro tartan seat cladding, a distinctive sloped dashboard, and the wraparound binnacle instrument cluster, which is now machined from a single billet of aluminum and given a modern digital display for clarity. All essential controls are housed in a carbon-fiber dashboard. “We wanted to avoid the modern tendency toward gadgetry,” said Lane. “The technology exists to enhance the experience, not to dominate it.” That said, infotainment, climate control, and camera systems have been discreetly integrated by Skyships Automotive.
Limited to just 50 examples, the Encor Series 1 is available to commission for just under $575,000 now before delivers begin in the second quarter of 2026.
