We all love cars with pop up headlights! They were our childhood poster cars. There was something special about them, they've always looked very exotic and were always associated with luxury cars like Lambos and Ferraris.
Perhaps many of you still dream of the sporty model Toyota gt Celica 5th Generation or about the sweet 1994 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 . In fact pop-up headlights were a great pleasure in most sports cars until the late 90s when safety restrictions made them illegal.
2nd place for the Lotus Esprit
V8 TURBO / RWD / manual / 0-60 mph in 4.3s / quarter mile in 12.6s / 175 mph
When you think of exotic sports cars around the world, images of a roaring 12-cylinder Ferrari or Lamborghini immediately pop into mind. But when you think of a Lotus Esprit, well, you certainly see the style of an exotic car, but perhaps not all of the sound and the fury that should accompany it.
Why did Colin Chapman, famous for his engineering achievements, put a whiny turbocharged 4-cylinder engine into the Esprit in the first place? Well, the truth is that when the Esprit was first conceived in 1970, a V-8 project (code-named M71) was already in the works. Maybe it's because of cost considerations that the V-8 did not make it into the Esprit's engine bay until 1997. But now, with double the cylinders making deep throaty sounds through its tailpipes, the Esprit can truly call itself a supercar.
For 1998, the compact and efficient Lotus Type 918 V-8 engine remains unchanged. This 3.5-liter 32-valve twin-turbo V-8 is capable of pumping out 350 bhp at 6,500 rpm and 295 lb-ft of torque at 4,250 rpm. The aluminum-block engine occupies the same volume as the previous 2.2-liter turbocharged inline-4, but weighs only 485 lb.
The deep, throaty growl of the Esprit's eight cylinders lets you hear the power as they launch the car to 60 mph in just 4.4 sec. It beats last year's turbocharged 4-cylinder Esprit S4S by 0.3 sec, and it's more than a half-second quicker to 60 mph than the Ferrari F355.
Complementing the V-8 engine are the Esprit's already first-rate handling characteristics. This Lotus continues with its upper and lower A-arms in front and lateral links with trailing arms at the rear. Around the skidpad and slalom, the Esprit V8 is well balanced, with mild understeer, but amenable to throttle-induced antics pretty much at will.
Wrapped around the Esprit V8 chassis remains the familiar low- and wide-stance styling that has made the car famous all these years. Its wedgy shape at the front precedes a low roofline and low-set doors. Though dramatic looking, ingress and egress through them are a challenge for anyone over 6-ft tall.
source: wikipedia
