When looking at the Autocar website today I was pleased to be greeted by the sight of one of the greatest cars ever built, in my humble estimation of course, the Lotus Carlton. I'm not sure how many people would agree with me here, but I've always thought that this car looks fantastic, take a simple four box saloon and put lots of big grilles in it and you've got a winner as far as I'm concerned.
The looks aren't important however, because you'd have to be mad not to at least respect his car, unless you're an environmentalist (22 mpg claimed if you're wondering). The impressive comparison of the day was the fact that it could outrun a Ferrari Testarossa, of course the Testarossa isn't the most well respected Ferrari. So how about we compare it to the well respected BMW M3 released in 2007. With it's 414bhp V8 it manages to outrun the Carlton by 1 second in the race to 100mph, or 0.3 seconds if you decide to stop at 60mph, that's 17 years of BMW R&D progress vs Lotus's one off efforts on a fairly average Vauxhall from 1986.
This Carlton makes 377bhp and a massive 419lb/ft thanks to Lotus's addition of two turbo's to Vauxhall's 3.6 litre in line 6. Two years after turbocharging was outlawed in F1 the car was still very much the product of the era of turbo performance, a thing Lotus knew a thing or two about. In 1988 they were running an F1 car with an awe inspiring, 685bhp, 1.5l Honda V6, while the long running Esprit had been turbocharged since 1980. Of course it's not engine tuning that made lotus the name it is, the companies real forte has always been producing a brilliant chassis, and the Carlton was not an exception. While not the best drivers car, they manged to make a 377bhp RWD saloon handle in a relatively safe manner without any electronic intervention.
I could continue quoting figures for many hours (did i mention it's top speed is in excess of 170?) but perhaps the brilliance of this car is best explained watching it do what it does best, and doesn't it look good doing it?
