Citroën C35

Citroën's five-speed manual transaxle, built for the Citroën SM — and in this catalogue the gearbox of the Lotus Esprit from its launch in 1976 to the 1988 model year.

It outlived the car it was built for by more than a decade. The SM had it from 1970 to 1975; it lived on, mirror-imaged, in Maserati's Merak, and Lotus chose it for the Esprit because the Renault gearbox of the Europa could not handle the new car's torque. Citroën guaranteed Lotus a supply for at least ten years, and Lotus took the SM's own set of ratios rather than specifying new ones. It is all-synchromesh.

The fact most worth knowing on an Esprit is the changeover. When the car was restyled in 1987 as the X180, most versions moved to a Renault UN-1 transaxle — a change that forced the rear brakes outboard — while the 1988 model-year North American Esprit Turbo kept this one. So an X180 can carry either gearbox, and its model year and market say which before anyone takes a case apart.