A little story about the Eclat Sprint‘s origins in the words of Ollie
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2024 21:54
The following is an extract from Ollie’s files reproduced with family permission.
“Throughout the time at Ketteringham, Chapman would divert Oliver to attend to other areas of his business interests. Lotus had built some 36 Eclat's with cheaper off the shelf wheels, a four speed gearbox and a low axle ratio to try and get a "loss leader" into the showrooms. The dealers weren't interested so Oliver had a Saturday morning 'tarting up' the cars with black stripes and a union jack "Sprint" logo on the rear. The Eclat was known as the Sprint in the USA, so the decal already existed although the home product used a cut down version. The cars were all sold by the Tuesday, so that was a success. They never made any more, however. Another job was to design a replacement for the proprietary Wolfrace alloy wheels on the Esprit. Oliver had just a morning to do those and they eventually were used on the Eclat as well.”
“Throughout the time at Ketteringham, Chapman would divert Oliver to attend to other areas of his business interests. Lotus had built some 36 Eclat's with cheaper off the shelf wheels, a four speed gearbox and a low axle ratio to try and get a "loss leader" into the showrooms. The dealers weren't interested so Oliver had a Saturday morning 'tarting up' the cars with black stripes and a union jack "Sprint" logo on the rear. The Eclat was known as the Sprint in the USA, so the decal already existed although the home product used a cut down version. The cars were all sold by the Tuesday, so that was a success. They never made any more, however. Another job was to design a replacement for the proprietary Wolfrace alloy wheels on the Esprit. Oliver had just a morning to do those and they eventually were used on the Eclat as well.”