That Time A Polish Carmaker Made The Lotus Esprit Before Lotus Did. Sort Of.

I sometimes think confusion is an under-appreciated mental state. We normally associate it with pretty negative circumstances, which makes sense, as being confused means being in a position where you can’t comprehend enough of what’s going on around you to do anything. In less demanding situations, though, there’s sometimes a strange, freeing joy to being a bit confused, or at least baffled. That’s the position I find myself in now, as I try to understand the story behind the relationship between the FSO 1100 Coupe prototype of 1974, and the famous Lotus Espirit of 1976.

FSO was the major automaker in Poland during the Eastern Bloc era, and after years of building the archaic compact Syrena and larger Warszawa, in 1965 made a deal with Fiat to build a number of their cars under license, as did another Polish factor, FSM, which made the little rear-engined Polski Fiat 126p that would become their people’s car, but FSO built other licensed Fiats like the Polski Fiat 125p, a licensed version of the boxy Fiat 125 sedan, and the 128p, and so on. Both factories sold cars outside Poland as Polski-Fiats, so there’s more confusion for you.

I mention all of this to give a bit of context to what’s coming next, because it’s really unexpected. Polski Fiat was under the control of the Socialist Polish government, cranking out workhorse cars for the population. Building a sports car was very much not part of Polski Fiat’s core business, but that’s exactly what they did in 1973.

For reasons that I can’t fully understand and have so far been unable to discover, FSO took the 1100cc engine from the FSO 128p, stuck it in the middle of a chassis, grabbed a bunch of other parts-bin switches and pedals and lights and other bits, and then built a wedge-shaped sports car around it that looked like this:

Wow! Pretty amazing looking, right? Also, oddly familiar. What’s it remind you of? Maybe one of these?

A Lotus Esprit. I mean, that FSO 1100 Coupé looks a hell of a lot like an Esprit. But the Esprit was released in 1976, and the FSO was started in 1973, shown in 1974. Does this suggest that, somehow, Lotus cribbed the Esprit from a Polish carmaker from behind the Iron Curtain?

Well, no. The fundamental design of the Esprit was derived from famed Italian car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro’s concept for Maserati called the Boomerang, which was shown at the 1971 Turin Motor Show. The Boomerang was used as Italdesign’s starting point for a mock-up built on a lengthened Lotus Europa chassis, resulting in a car just known as “The Silver Car,” which was shown at the next year’s Turin Auto Show, on Italdesign’s stand.

Interestingly, at that same 1972 Turin Auto Show, the Fiat 126 was introduced as well, which would go on to become Polski-Fiat’s (again, from FSM, but still Polish) best-known car.

So, the Silver Car showed the world what the upcoming Lotus Esprit would look like, but somehow FSO managed to build one before Lotus did, though I’m still uncertain as to how or why.

The similarity of the look is really pretty striking, and seems much more than could be just coincidental. The Lotus has somewhat lower, longer proportions, but the basic look is there, the distinctive window shapes, especially the unusually rectangular rear quarter window, even details like the door handles!

Of course there’s differences, not the least of which is that the FSO makes about 55 horsepower and steals its taillights from a 125p:

…as opposed to the Lotus, which steals its taillights from a completely different Fiat, the X1/9:

The FSO sports car never made it past the one prototype, and, after being shown at the something called the Warsaw XXX Exhibition (I’m guessing the XXX is Roman numerals for “30” because every other Google search for that just brings up porn; also, it commemorated the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Warsaw in WWII), the car was not chosen to go into any sort of production.

The FSO 1100 Coupé did drive, and may have had the 75 horsepower version of the 1100cc engine as used in the Fiat X1/9, but records aren’t clear.

Eventually, the prototype was scrapped, which seems a shame, but I don’t think the Polish auto industry was as sentimental as we may be back then.

We may never know exactly why or if designer Zbigniew Wattson deliberately lifted the design of the proto-Esprit, or if it was something more subtle, but whatever it was, it’s still fascinating to think about, and wonder what would have happened if Lotus had their own design scooped by a Polish carmaker, sold to countries that had almost no actual sports cars on their markets.

I’m enjoying the bafflement still.

(images: FSO, Bonhams, Lotus, and thanks, Hans)