[DML] Re: Rob Grady's Personal Lower Suspension (Tangent: Lotus Esprit suspension)

["jtrealtywebspannet" <jtrealty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You have to give credit to Lotus for the engineering, it won many races. While it is true the cars had many engineering problems, to be fair the cars were not built to last. Colin Chapman's mantra was to "Add Lightness", make parts serve as many purposes as possible to keep weight down, and the car should fall apart after it wins a race. Otherwise you put more into it than necessary. The cars Lotus built in the 80's were more race cars than street cars, they were not built for reliability or longevity. That is the heritage Deloreans inherited. As for the money you allude to, nothing was ever proven but the allegations seem to be enough for most people to find JZD and CC guilty. Does anyone really think Lotus should NOT have been paid for all of the engineering work they did for DMC? To say DMC went broke because of the deal with Lotus is just plain wrong. 
 The rear suspension set-up did work but it was terrible when it got a little worn. OK for racing but not good for street driving. Eventually Lotus realized it was not good enough and went back to independent lower links. Lotus was on the "cutting edge" of automotive technology and not everything they did was good but they were "pushing the envelope".
David Teitelbaum

--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "content22207" <brobertson@...> wrote:
>
> Early Esprit owners actually have bigger problems in the back: eating up CV joints at a prodigious rate because Lotus, in a fit of genius engineering, tried to make the drive axles double as lower suspension links.
> 
> Lotus has a long history of screwing things up.
> 
> That is why the company was going bankrupt when John DeLorean showed up with fistfuls of taxpayer money for he and Colin Chapman to abscond with.
> 
> Bill Robertson
> #5939
> 
> --- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Justin Mettee" <jamettee@> wrote:
> >
> > Given all the complaints, design similarities/differences to various other automotive applications, etc., I decided to search for what the DMC's cousin of the time used for front suspension.  I figured if Lotus based the chassis of the DMC heavily on the Esprit of that time, then there should be similar parts & geometries, right?
> > 
> > Well I found this: http://www.lotusespritturbo.com/Lotus_Esprit_Turbo_Chassis.jpg
> > The Lotus Esprit Turbo chassis on the assembly line, I believe during the slightly later era (early/mid 80's).  (The above is from the websitee http://www.lotusespritturbo.com/Lotus_History_Toyota_GM_Years.htm).  Interesting how similar the upper front (& rear) suspension look similar, but the lower is completely different & triangulated, but this is a later generation & more performance-oriented car.
> > 
> > So I look further for the earlier Esprit 2.2 (1980-81) & find this site: http://www.thelotusforums.com/forums/topic/38109-at-last-shes-stripped/ .  Down a little way, you see the front suspension & it is pretty darn similar to the DMC.  The one thing I see that is marginally better than our application is the layout of the swaybar places the front mounts further outboard & likely restrains the fore/aft movement of the LCA better than the DMC does.  Not optimal, but probably a better driver setup than a DMC.
> > 
> > I wonder if Lotus owners have the same hard-braking control issues & LCA failures that the DMC is prone to?
> > 
> > Justin Mettee
> > VIN 2075
> >
>




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