Lotus Omega/Carlton, the forgotten record breaker. #BlogPost

Hello my friends and welcome to another one of my cr*ppy blog posts. Today I will tell you about one of the fastest saloons of the 90s, which is indeed the Lotus Omega/Carlton. Now, I will stick with the Omega name, because I come from a country where the brand is Opel, not Vauxhall. Some of you may know about this engineering magnificence but, some of you may not, so here is what this is all about.

History

So, let’s start with the Opel Omega. It isn’t a very exciting car. Sure, it’s a RWD saloon, but that’s about it. The engineers from Opel/Vauxhall knew that and they wanted to spice it up a little bit. What they did was call Lotus for help. Basically, they gave Lotus an Omega sedan and said “Make this car faster!”. And so they did. The car was not only fast, but for it’s time it was crazy! People in Britain actually wanted to ban it because it was too damn fast. Bacause it could go as fast as a supercar and carry 4 people at the same time, it became a must-have for a succesful criminal. When a robbery was done in the UK with this car, the police didn’t even try to chase the criminals, because the fastest car they had was a Vauxhall Senator, which was electronically limited to 90 mp/h. A production run of 1100 cars was planned, but only 950 were built, due to bad sales.

Technical Specifications

What was left from the Omega after Lotus put their hands on it was the body and the interior. The engine, originally an Opel 3.0L inline six, was bored and stroked by Lotus to 3.6L. Then they strapped two Garrett T25 turbochargers to it. They also added an intercooler, strengthened the block, upgraded the cylinder head, replaced the crankshaft, pistons and connecting rods. In order to deliver the power to the rear wheels reliably and efficently, they replaced the standard gearbox with the gearbox from a C4 ZR-1 Corvette! The suspension was also reworked. Apart from being upgraded by Lotus, a clever self-leveling suspension was installed to deal with camber change while turning at high speeds. It was also fitted with Ronal 17” rims and Goodyear Eagle tyres.

Performance

With the upgraded engine producing 377bhp and with the upgraded suspension, the car can reach 100 km/h (62 mp/h) in just 5.2 seconds and it can keep on going to 300 km/h (186 mp/h). In fact, it held the record for the fastest production 4 door saloon for quite some time, being faster than it’s rival - the BMW M5. In a Top Gear test, Tiff Needell actually said that the Ferrari Testarossa was more of a rival than the BMW M5.

That was it for this blog post mates, I hope you liked it. I would like to hear your opinions and thoughts on the post and the car in the comments.