‘LOTUS’ is a badge stuck onto the rump of many legends.
The Cortina. The Carlton. The Sunbeam. The Corsa VXR.
Well, on the last one, it wasn’t – but it should have been. That’s because much of Louts’ profit comes from Lotus Engineering. That’s the specialist consultancy division, which does work for loads of car makers, including sorting out their cars’ handling.
Back in 1987, it completed a textbook project for the Isuzu Piazza: could they, err, sort out the handling?
Yup, indeedy. Which earned the funny old Piazza a ‘Handling by Lotus’ badge for its rump. But just what did Lotus do, in the five months and 50,000 miles it worked on the car?
Well, typically for Lotus, the mods focused on black magic with the dampers. But there were subtleties elsewhere, too:
•   Softer front springs
•   More compression and less rebound for front dampers
•   Stiffer rear springs
•   Relocated rear dampers with equal-rate bump and rebound
•   1mm thinner front anti-roll bar
•   Altered caster and camber angles
The result of these delicacies? Well, according to some bizarre test within Isuzu, handling was up by 21 percent, and ride by 15 percent.
Nuts. I prefer the road tester assessment; it was ‘now much more like it’…
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