Turbo Esprit

The object of the game is to prevent a gang of drug smugglers completing a delivery of heroin, by tracking down their cars and destroying them, or ramming them into submission. The player takes the role of a special agent driving the titular Lotus Esprit car, which had been used in a James Bond film a few years previously. The player must travel around one of four available cities looking for the criminals. Messages from HQ will flash up periodically giving the location of a target armoured car, which may then be tracked on the map.

A courier car would then attempt to rendezvous with the armoured car to transfer the heroin, and the armoured car would then flee the city. Other courier cars would act as decoys.

According to author Mike Richardson, Turbo Esprit took 10 months to develop, the longest time he ever spent on a single game. It was developed with the cooperation of Lotus Cars Ltd., who provided "technical assistance".

Turbo Esprit was generally well received by the gaming press, gaining positive reviews from most major gaming magazines. Sinclair User called it "one of the best games ever released", and it has since been described as "pioneering" and "one of the Spectrum's best original games". The Spectrum version was voted number 64 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time. Retro Gamer magazine said of the game: "It was way ahead of its time and it could be argued that what you are looking at here is the genesis of the Grand Theft Auto series", and that it "sealed Durell's reputation as a purveyor of quality software".

The game reached number eight in the Gallup All-Formats charts and number one in the ZX Spectrum chart, replacing Movie.