The following production numbers were provided by Patrick Peal, ex-communications director for Lotus. In the table, HCPI refers to the high-compression engine variant of the Esprit, GMP4 refers to the cars built with the General Motors multiport fuel injection, and Interclr refers to the "SE" variants that have the Lotus Chargecooler engine.
Current Esprit production is about 150 cars per year. However, Lotus is also busy building the Elise roadster at a rate of about 3,000 cars per year.
It's interesting to note that, in 28/years of production, less than
10,000 Esprits were built. By comparison, Porsche builds more than
30,000 cars per year, Ferrari, builds between 3,500 and 5,000 per year,
and Ford builds more than 10,000 vehicles per day! In fact, Ford sells
more than 30,000 Explorer SUVs in a month! Now you can see why Lotus is
a true limited-production, exotic supercar, and why it's so hard to find
a dealer or parts for your car.
Year |
Esprit |
Turbo |
HCPI |
GMP4 |
SE |
S4 |
Sport300 |
S4s |
V8 |
1976 |
134 |
||||||||
1977 |
580 |
||||||||
1978 |
553 |
||||||||
1979 |
474 |
||||||||
1980 |
80 |
57 |
|||||||
1981 |
185 |
116 |
|||||||
1982 |
160 |
205 |
|||||||
1983 |
84 |
343 |
|||||||
1984 |
104 |
418 |
|||||||
1985 |
127 |
262 |
62 |
||||||
1986 |
72 |
136 |
246 |
||||||
1987 |
78 |
186 |
298 |
||||||
1988 |
176 |
387 |
375 |
120 |
|||||
1989 |
90 |
103 |
121 |
563 |
|||||
1990 |
22 |
51 |
8 |
698 |
|||||
1991 |
9 |
3 |
113 |
||||||
1992 |
1 |
172 |
4 |
1 |
|||||
1993 |
62 |
233 |
25 |
||||||
1994 |
339 |
30 |
1 |
||||||
1995 |
46 |
8 |
331 |
||||||
1996 | 260 | ||||||||
1997 | 177 | ||||||||
1998 | 241 | ||||||||
1999 | 197 | ||||||||
2000 | 219 | ||||||||
2001 | N/A | ||||||||
2002 | N/A | ||||||||
2003 | N/A | ||||||||
2004 | N/A | ||||||||
Total |
2919 |
2274 |
881 |
252 |
1608 |
622 |
64 |
332 |
1094 |