The car came home on a flatbed in October 2010. The previous owner had given up on it after a head gasket job that didn’t quite take. The car was complete. It just didn’t run.
It runs now. It has run for nine years. It does not, however, run well. Not yet.
The list of what’s been done: head off, head decked, valves done, timing belt and tensioner, water pump, radiator (an aluminum replacement from a vendor who specializes in these), the entire cooling system gone over twice, fuel pump twice, fuel injectors cleaned and flow-matched, ignition coils, plug wires, a Megasquirt that fought me for two summers, and three of the four window regulators.
The list of what hasn’t been done: paint (it needs it), the headliner (it has the original sag), the dashboard (one of the binnacle indicators is permanently lit), the AC (it never worked and likely never will), and the carpet, which is the original and will, I have decided, remain so until the car or I are no longer here.
The lesson, if there is one, is that the Esprit Turbo is not a project car in the sense that you finish it. It is a project car in the sense that you live with it. The work and the driving are the same activity. The car is happy when you are driving it and the car is happy when you are working on it and the car is unhappy only when it is sitting still, which is, in my garage, almost never.
I will be at LUG 2026 in Salt Lake City. The car will not be. The car does not do altitude.
