The
Lotus Esprit is a
sports car that was built by
Lotus in the
United Kingdom between 1976 and 2004. The silver
Italdesign concept that eventually became the Esprit was unveiled at the
Turin Motor Show in 1972 as a
concept car, and was a development of a stretched
Lotus Europa chassis. It was among the first of designer
Giorgetto Giugiaro's polygonal "folded paper" designs. Originally, the name
Kiwi was proposed, but in keeping with the Lotus tradition of having all car model names start with the letter "E", the name became Esprit.