Ode to an Icon: My Lifelong Love Affair with the Lotus Esprit
It started with a dive. Yes… I said “dive”, not “drive”. Actually, I don’t do water. So my answer to Roger Moore would have been “no” when he turned to his passenger in the 1977 Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, and asked, “Can you swim?”. Of course, his actual passenger was a lot prettier.
I am obviously referring to that epochal moment when 007 truly went full sci-fi, as a sleek, low, wedge-shaped car sliced under a helicopter, zipped off a pier, dove into the ocean and transformed into a submarine. That white Lotus Esprit had me at “Look what Q’s brought for us, isn’t it nice?” – it was love at first sight, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.
