#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
A relentless chase. A deadly secret. No way out. That’s the promise at the heart of Silent Ruin, my brand-new international spy thriller and the first in a new series featuring Jamshed Khan. This is a character I originally created over three decades ago, now reborn into a far more grown-up, high-stakes world of espionage, danger, and consequence.
There are certain cars that don’t just sit in your memory… they take up permanent residence in your soul. For me, the Lotus Esprit is one of them. That razor-edged wedge, the Bond connection, the sheer audacity of its design… it wasn’t just a car, it was a spaceship.
So when I first heard about the Encor Series 1, a modern reinterpretation of the original Lotus Esprit S1, I started wondering if aliens had probed my mind, and stumbled upon my dream car – the purity of the original shape Esprit combined with a V8 drivetrain and all mod-cons. I’ve been salivating since the first moment they started releasing teaser images, lost my mind when they revealed the car and details, and could barely contain my excitment to finally see the car in person yesterday.
Here’s my video of the car, including a full walkaround, interior details, and an in-depth discussion about the “Esprit Remastered” with one of the founders, Simon Lane.
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.
