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y o u r c a r | y o u r A u t u m n 2 0 1 0
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SUPER
MOD ELS
032
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ESPRit
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ESPRitLotus most iconic supercarreturns with styling and
technical innovations everybit as breathtaking as theGiugiaro-designed Esprit
unveiled at the Paris MotorShow 35 years ago. Low,wide, intense, and purpose-ul, the Esprit looks like its
breaking the speed limiteven when waiting or thelight to change. The rontand taillights, set threedimensionally, appear to
be oating part o thesophisticated design themecommon throughout thisrange. Its highly original
daylight openingsthe body, and thelook like somethina superbike. The V8 mid-engined tw
is distinctive andinside and out, intproportion, symmand style.
Star Power >
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ELanThe Elan, the heart o therange, will deliver best-in-class perormance or amid-engined two-seater,competing with the Porsche
911 and Audi R8. The in-novative combination oconcave and convex sectionsproduces a tense, muscularbody, the hindquarters o
which were inspio the most iconiccars ever designe79. The result is alightweight sport
the taut lines o aInside, the cockpocused, ergonomwith contemporasync with the rak
Seduction >
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ELan
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ELitEThis 2+2 ront-enginedsupercoupe representssomething o a shock in theLotus lineup: Though powerul,luxurious grand tourers like
this are a staple o Britishautomotive cratsmanship,Lotus ocus has previouslybeen on eatherweight
two-seaters. Summthe carmakers corethe Elite is lighter thcompetition rom AJaguar, and Bentle
and elegant, the GTsome DNA with thebut mated with a p5.0 V8 to pitch it he
Sophistication >
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ELitE
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ELiSEDesigned or uncompro-mised driving pleasure, the2-seater is built around itspilot. Compact and agile, itswailike weigh-in encour-
ages high-perormancerom its mid-mounted
our-cylinder I4 2engine. The Seriwas launched 15and until now havery little. With t
model, it seems skipped a generause o contrastinsuch as carbon a
Purity >
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ELiSE
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sty
Licensto
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Hw Lus hif gRgr Bkr bm h w
ulikly mvi sBy Jsh Sims
007S SecRetWeapon
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L o t us m o m e n t s
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S i t t i n g i n a t - S h i r t a n d S h o r t S u n d e r
the veranda o his holiday home in Cartagena, Spain,Roger Becker would seem to make or an unlikely
secret agent. Recently retired ater almost 45 years
as Lotus chie test and development engineer, he is
now licensed more to chill than to kill though he
still points out how the pillars in the balustrade sur-
rounding his Spanish sun terrace are not quite per-
pendicular and wonders how the awnings might be
extended and angled to maximize the shade. With
the ever-present sea view and a brand-new boat on
order, though, lie has moved into an elongated de-
celeration; his ip-opped oot is well o the pedal.
Make no mistake, though: This is the same mild-
mannered man who ought o machine-gun fre and
out-drove gigantic, metal-toothed villains. It was
Becker and his team under the direction o Lotus
ounder Colin Chapman who devised the Excel, the
Elise, and Beckers legacy, the new, acclaimed Evora,
rom frst discussion to fnished car in just two and a
hal years. It was al so Becker who, about 35 years ago,
devised the Esprit the l egendary vehicle that may
just be the most memorable car in movie history.
During the flming o The Spy Who Loved Me, you
see, Becker was asked to don a wig and one o RogerMoores suits to drive that Esprit. Not just any Esprit,
either, but rather the white, wedge-shaped growler
that fred rockets, laid mines, squirted cement, trans-
ormed into a submarine, and put its makers frmly
among the ranks o legendary autos.
It ended up being seven weeks o shooting i n Sar-
dinia or about seven minutes o screen time, the ac-
cidental stuntman says. But they were a great seven
minutes. (In act, Becker had only one accident dur-
ing the flming when he reversed one o the two
production cars into a ditch.) How many people can
claim to have been given an opportunity to drive in
a flm like that? Becker wonders. The cast ended
up calling me 006-and-a-hal. I never quite made it
as 007.
Thats not the only aectionate nickname Becker
achieved during his remarkable career. While he
was pioneering Lotus engine- and transmission-
development work with Toyota, he was reerred to
as Becker San around the actory. Nor has he been
quite able to leave all that behind him just yet: Becker
still consults or Lotus and a handul o other majorcar companies. You can take the boy out o Lotus,
but its very hard to take the Lotus out o the boy,
he says.
Such is Beckers living-legend status with Lotus
that the company is launching RGB Special Editions
o the Exige and Elise in his honor. O course, Mr.
Lotus is getting one himsel, set or delivery later this
year, having been rendered to his rather particular
specifcations. Ive always been into black-on-white
or cars white exterior with a black interior, he
says. Its the eye-catching purity o the look. And Ive
always wanted a Lotus with a black nose badge, but
theyve always declined, saying it was only or use in
memoriam. Well, now Im getting one at last on the
Special. Its kind o in memoriam o Roger Becker, I
guess o his passing . . . out o Lotus.
Brand image has become so important in the automotive
industry. How huge o a coup was it to get Bond into the
Esprit 35 years ago?
I think there were two big pushes that put Lotus on
the map: Formula One, which was very dierent
then it was very much about the willingness o the
drivers to be given an idea by the likes o Colin Chap-
man and then being prepared to go out and try it. By
trade, Chapman wasnt even a mechanical engineer.
He was a civil engineer with simple mantras: add
lightness and dont use two components i one can
do both jobs. But the other big push was the Bond
flm. That just lit up the company. It made the Esprit
a premium product. Lotus had always been big with
racing ans, but now it was a l iestyle choice, too. The
Esprit became a status object.
It must have cost the company a ortune.
We were actually the last company to get one o our
cars into a Bond movie without paying or it and
it only happened because somebody tipped a wink
to our PR guy! The PR guy was told about a parking
space outside the movie production ofce, and Ken
Adam [the pioneering Bond production designer]
was encouraged to keep looking out o the window at
this Esprit. Adam wanted a car that looked uturistic
and looked like it would work underwater. You just
cant imagine that with an Aston Martin, or any big
brick shithouse o a vehicle. Chapman, o course, saw
the Bond flm as a perect test or the car in the higher
ambient temperatures o Sardinia, where the driving
scenes were shot.
Did you plan on becoming a sort o instant stunt driver?
The stuntman told me that he didnt usually do stunt
driving so I had a week to get him driving a Lotus
as you can drive a Lotus. And he just couldnt get it. He
was more about swinging a car rom side to side and
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th s dd u llig m 006-d--hlf.I vr qui md i s 007.
Becker in between takes inPorto Cervo, Sardinia, duringshooting in 1976
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having the squealing-tire sound eects dubbed on
not making them squeal or real. There was a simple
scene when Bond has to drive ast up a road. While
they were shooting, the stuntman would just oor the
throttle and over and over again, it didnt look or
sound right. Once they asked me to bring the car up
or a certain shot, so I drove as was natural or me: I
screamed up the road, and the assistant directors were
jumping up and down, yelling: Thats how we want it!
Why cant we get him to do the driving? So I did it.
And along the way, you turned into Bond in more ways
than one.
Well, I had to dress like Roger Moore or some o thescenes I wore a wig and was pinned into a suit
that didnt ft me. Roger was much taller than me, so
I looked pretty ridiculous. But the stunt coordinator
insisted that he negotiate the scenes and the payment
or the work; it was his one condition. So at the end o
each day I brought my ticket to the cashier, and I ended
up with a lot o money or the driving. Everybody on
the set said, Dont get caught trying to take the cash
across the borders on the way home. I bought loads
o presents, but I still had piles o money let. I ended
up taking the passenger seat out o one o the cars and
lining the seat with all these wads o lira notes beore
I drove it home. It was all an adventure. How many
people get to all into an experience like that?
How difcult were the stunts you were perorming?
Most o it was just driving ast, which is really not
all that hard or me. But it was certainly memorable
how couldnt it be? Me in an Esprit driving under
a helicopter ying sideways, explosions going on all
around me and machine-gun eects going o, the
ull downward thrust o the helicopter and a 300-
oot drop-o into the ocean on the other side o me.
I didnt get to do the most a mous o the stunts to
drive o the end o the pier. I just got up to the end
o the pier, where a compressed-air-powered Lotus
shell stued with tire inner tubes took over. Watch
careully and you can see that when the car hit the
water, the whole ront was blown o. On the plus
side, though, I did get a good picture o [Bond girl]
Caroline Monroe in her bikini up against the car.
Did the whole experience make you a kind o stunt-
driving expert?Well, I had my eyes opened to just how alse the whole
flm world is especially the trickery o the eects.
The scene in the movie where the Esprit sprays ce-
ment onto the windscreen o the pursuing car? That
was porridge, and it had to be shot backwards, with
me actually reversing down the hill at speed, and the
flm then played orwards. The explosions were just
a bit o steel plate, some Cordtex, cork, and cement
powder. Some people told me to put some earplugs
in because the explosions could be quite loud You
wont inch as much, they said. I thought, Nah, I
wont bother. Then everything went o and it was
like, Jesus! That was harder to deal with than driv-
ing just a ew eet under a helicopter that was or
real, and at times it was damn close.
You werent tempted to take any o Ken Adams ideas
back to the engineering department?
A acility or porridge squirting? No. And Ive never
been that keen on going underwater either, so even
a submarine car wouldnt appeal to me much. Im
much happier on the surace o the water. A car that
turned into a boat might appeal but then again Im
just as happy in a car that simply goes pretty ast.
Now that youre semiretired, do you miss the speed?
Well, I still drive pretty ast. In act, Id scare the shit
out o you. The desire to go ast is instinctive, and a
Lotus just comes alive or me. The whole philoso-
phy o Lotus is that you can become one with the
car. I can still get most cars to go quickly and still
have quite ast reaction times, although o course
they slow with age. Thats your body telling you to
cool down a bit. O course, Im not as ast as I usedto be at some point, sel-preservation takes over.
But I only had one big accident in all those years,
and it was totally my ault. I ended up rolling a car
into a feld with the tire engineer on-board. There
were plenty o close ones, really, but i you dont
have those, youre not pushing hard enough. We
taught our drivers to do power-sliding or drit-
ing, as its now called rom a very early stage.
Colin Chapman frst demonstrated that to me on
public roads. At the time, even I thought that was
taking it too ar.
But surely theres more to test-driving than
speed alone.
I was still very young about 21 when I got my
driving test with Lotus and became one o their test
drivers. These days you have to be 30 beore you
could qualiy or that sort o position its a very
hard world, and the perormance o cars is that
much higher now. These days we take those drivers
we recognize as having an inherent ability behind the
wheel, and then we develop those skills. Most people
use 80 percent o their attention to keep a car on theroad, leaving them just 20 percent to do other things
with. We turn that around, so you have 80 percent to
think about whats happening with the car. That is an
unusual skill. Then again, so is being able to power-
slide round and round a roundabout until the tires
give out.
Josh Simsis an author andautomobile writer who recently
securedan interview with the other Roger (Moore,that is).
Drivig udr hlir gig sidwys, xlsisd mhi gus gig ff, 300-f dr-ff i
h hw uld i b mmrbl?
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Roger Becker with the LotusEsprit he drove in The Spy WhoLoved MeOpposite: RogerMoore, as Bond, knew the valueof a smoke and a martini