Lotus Esprit 1979 S2 JPS Commemorative Edition 2Door

This Lot will be sold at auction at Symphony of Spring; Ascot Racecourse on Saturday 7th March. One of 100 examples built. Largely original condition. Previous 15year ownership, forming part of a mostly Lotuscentred collection. The Lotus Esprit JPS Commemorative Edition is a striking and rare limitededition variant of the Lotus Esprit Series 2, created to mark Team Lotuss Formula 1 World Championship success in 1978. Unique features include a distinctive black and gold JPS livery, inspired by the colours of Lotuss F1 cars sponsored by John Player Special. Also included are enhanced special edition details with goldaccented alloy wheels, gold windscreen surrounds, World Champion sidestripes, and bespoke interior touches like black leather with gold corduroy inserts and a commemorative numbered dash plaque. Mechanically, it shares the 1,973cc Lotus 907 DOHC engine with the standard S2 Esprit, meaning the performance remains similar, but the collectible value is significantly elevated.This special Esprit comes from a private collection and has previously been part of other significant collections, the keeper before our vendor owning the car for some fifteen years! In that time, it had won awards at shows, featured in various magazines and was thoroughly enjoyed. One of the attractions of this example is just how original it appears to be; so many of these cars have now been overly restored, but this one just looks right, and whilst it has some small bits of microblistering and crazing in places, that just goes towards further verifying its originality its 46 years old after all! The interior is in remarkably good order, with very few signs of use or ageing, and the numbered plaque and correct Mario Andretti signed steering wheel are still in place. Thankfully, the original Hitachi digital stereo with JPS knobs is still in place too, a part which would surely be almost impossible to replace if it were missing. A cambelt service along with a new exhaust and some work on the cooling system were carried out by Paul Matty Sports Cars in 2019 at a cost of over £2,800, with only around 1,000 miles covered since. This Esprit has been quite well documented, with a feature in CAR magazines 50th anniversary issue in 2016, a sixpage article in Classic Car magazine in 2013 and was used to help promote the Heritage Racing Special limited edition Omologato watch. This example is ready to be enjoyed once more by another enthusiastic owner, supplied to auction with an impressive history file and a V5 registration document. Consigned by Daniel Godin