It’s funny how certain cars just fail to register. I’m sure I must have seen at least a few of these when new, either as Chevrolet /Geo Spectrums or as Isuzu I-Marks, back when I lived in the US, but they must have made a great job of blending into the background. Mind you, most of them weren’t branded with the “Handling by Lotus” badge, were they?
I guess a few of these also made it to Europe too (as the Isuzu Gemini), but I genuinely do not recall having seen this car before. The distinctive shape of the turn signals would have made this 1987-90 generation easier to remember than the pre-facelift cars (1985-87), which look extremely generic, in an ‘80s econobox sort of way. The overall design, facelift notwithstanding, remains underwhelming; the four-door saloon looks particularly clunky. The hatchback looks a bit like a Mk2 Golf, so it’s more palatable.
Apparently, Giugiaro designed these, originally. But then Isuzu / GM made some changes behind his back, so he Alan Smitheed the whole affair. Not sure who designed the 1987 facelift, but it definitely added a smidgen of personality to an otherwise dull package.
According to previous CC posts on this car (under the Holden, Isuzu and Geo marques anyway), praise was rather on the faint side as to the Gemini’s dynamic qualities, both chassis- and engine-wise. Well, I guess if a car’s handling is going to be sloppy, might as well have a gutless engine to go with it. But as Lotus were then part of the GM family, the good people from Hethel were roped in to polish this turd, leading to the Gemini ZZ Handling by Lotus (its official name in Japan) being launched in March 1988. Twenty-five years after the humble Ford Cortina, Lotus were at it on the even humbler Isuzu Gemini.
The JT190 Gemini’s suspension was comprehensively Lotusified, but that was not the end of it. BBS wheels were fitted as standard and under the hood, thankfully, the sedate 1.5 was replaced by a lively 1588cc DOHC 16-valve engine, also revisited by Lotus. In Japan, this little number would spin the front wheels with 140hp – about twice the power of the standard engine.
Interestingly, that wasn’t the only performance consultancy that Isuzu had arranged for their beleaguered berlina. Vowelly-challenged German tuning expert Irmscher also made several versions (example above), which started coming out in 1987.
That’s a lot of souped-up specials for such a modest model, but I guess Isuzu were desperate to inject some excitement into this thing. It was, after all, the first car they had designed from the ground up since the 117 / Florian.
They certainly pulled out all the stops for the interior design. It’s a little difficult to tell from the angle I took the photo, but the array of switches on the side of the instrument cluster / pod is pretty wild. Reminds me of certain Citroëns.
I guess a factory photo would do better to illustrate this particular point. Plus, check out that special leather-covered steering wheel. The Lotus touch is a light touch.
Despite the shiny black paint with gold pinstripe, the Lotus badge, the BBS wheels and all that, it still looks like a K-car that got rear-ended by a Mack truck. Giugiaro said he later regretted distancing himself from his creation. Maybe he just had a moment of clarity and realized what a poor job he’d done on this Isuzu.
Which is a shame, as some of the other designs Giugiaro did for the marque were excellent. Even the greatest of the greats have their off days. Can’t blame Lotus for being part of the same conglomerate as Isuzu, but I’m sure they were content to beta-test the engine / transmission combo they were about to use on their car. So if nothing else, at least this Gemini helped in creating the Lotus Elan M100, the only front-drive car the British marque ever made.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1988 Isuzu I-Mark: Just Another Household Appliance, by JPC
Curbside Classic: 1985-87 Holden RB Gemini/1985-89 Chevrolet Spectrum/Isuzu I-Mark – The Stars Didn’t Align, by William Stopford
Curbside Capsule: 1985-87 Holden Gemini SL/E – Missing The I-Mark, by William Stopford
COAL: 1986 Isuzu I-Mark – That’s No Lie!, by Jim Klein
CC Outtake: 1989 Geo Spectrum – The Blue Band of the Spectrum, by PN
Wow, that’s in amazing condition, more how you’d think you might find a 1989 Lotus Esprit than a Lotus-tuned Isuzu.
While there were shortcomings with my I-Mark, overall it was a pretty good car, certainly as compared to the other offerings of the time and definitely when compared to the domestics – as they themselves for a large part also bought imports and then decontented and rebadged them, often making them worse than the real thing just to hit a price or profit point.
Everything Isuzu did to offer as improvements to the base package such as this and the other engine options actually did so, and not in an overly overt way, i.e. there was some steak on offer, not just sizzle. Lotus can be bagged on for being part of GM at one time, but the flipside is that if that hadn’t happened, they likely wouldn’t still be around now, it got them through another rough patch. They’ve pretty much always taken on outside engineering work, just not very often with a badge to show their involvement as the other makers (their customers) would rather not advertise they went elsewhere for a solution to whatever problem they had.
General consensus is that Lotus’s outside work keeps the company going and keeps the scale of the business; the cars are almost a moving showroom
So did the Gemini have nothing in common with the Kadett D ? Why did GM replace the ‘T’ car with two different models ?
I remember seeing a few of these in Ireland, but took little notice as they didn’t have the style of the bigger Aska.
Good question, why? I still haven’t found an answer. I’m intrigued that Isuzu had enough autonomy within the GM framework to devise their own T-car alternative when Europe went their own way. After all, it’s not as though the previous Gemini had flopped in Japan. And not content with designing their own car, Isuzu also developed its own unique engine for it, rather than adopting the Opel one. Was it all a point of honour for Isuzu?
And in a inscrutable twist of fate, this car seems to have become desirable in Japan. One of the long-established kit-makers has recently tooled-up a series of models of this Gemini: the ‘Handling by Lotus’, the Irmscher, and others I don’t remember. Not for me though.
It’s Hasegawa. At some point once I get a decent image-macro camera to replace the one that died I’ll have to post the one I converted to LHD and built as a base-model USDM Chevy Spectrum. In brown.
I did the opposite, built mine as a Holden RB Gemini. Look forward to seeing your build.
The Elan M100, which went on to live a second life as…a Kia!
I once rode in the ” regular ” Gemini, when my car was at the local Honda dealer being serviced. That Gemini was a pretty forgettable car. Medium blue inside and out, with an automatic transmission. The narrowness of the car made me think of 70s Subarus with an interior that looked like it was made by Rubbermaid with a few swatches of cloth.
I don’t think that I have seen one of these ” special edition ” outside of a magazine article.
BTW,the hatchbacks looked like the original Hyundai Excels, but shrunken down by about 2/3s.
Hi my Friendss, I’m from Indonesia. Isuzu Gemini, in Indonesia, in 1980’s called Holden Gemini, and almost used for TAXI, it’s very rare the family using this type. Due Main Dealer of Holden Closed in Indonesia, so Holden slowly but sure sun set, Now Holden to be a Hobbies/ Collector Item, especially in the Old Type like Special, Kings wood, Premier, Monaro, Caprice, Belmont.
Isuzu Gemini maybe the same product under GM, in Indonesia Holden Geminis in Gasoline and Diesel.
In the context of the times, I don’t think these were bad looking. The stylistic (and IP) influence were from the Impulse?Piazza, and especially the two door hatch looked quite nice. The 4-door was a bit stubby, but no worse than others, given its dimensions.
Handling by Lotus and Irmscher logos adorn various Isuzus but are mostly seen on the Big Horn SUVs, THe Aska came here wearing Holden Camira badging it was a nervous car on the road nothing like the Aussie version, I havent seen one of these Gemini though the old T car model was outsold by the Vauxhall T car Chevette here, the 3 door model was quite zippy and tossable cheap and popular
What amazing condition!
Certainly the nicest I-Mark I ever saw.
In the 6th photo, looks like the rear windshield wiper is on the *inside* of the window ??!!
I believe on that version of the car the wiper is on the rear glass as normal then the spoiler is sort of a hoop design that attaches at the metal edge framework and crosses over, visually bisecting the glass but leaving a gap that the wiper operates within.
Here’s a better angle:
I had to rent one of the non-Lotus versions in 1991 or ‘92 to drive 150 miles to get parts four broken down Vanagon, including some of the Sierra foothills’ finest twisties. What can I say, it made it to the parts store and back. Otherwise, very forgettable, in fact one of those cars it took a CC post to remind me I had driven. But, in this trim especially, it’s a fine looking car and I always liked the short tail.
That side shot, with the BBS wheels on it reminds me of a Shelby Lancer.
Whenever I think of the Isuzu I-Mark, I think of car shopping for my younger sisters, specifically the youngest one, as one of the cars we considered for her was an I-Mark. It was kind of my assumed “job” as only brother, and car-oriented at that, to look for cars for my youngest 2 sisters back in the 80’s and into the early 90’s when they were still in College or early career and were firmly in the used car market, couldn’t afford a new one. Interestingly, never did this for my twin sister, but she had a boyfriend (now my brother-in-law) who’s also car oriented so he was drafted rather than I. Both my younger sisters had similar requirements which were hard to satisfy; they wanted a small, sporty car, with automatic transmission, without too many miles.
Nowdays, the “automatic” requirement would have been much easier to deal with when shopping for a small car, but 3-4 decades ago small cars in particular were overwhelmingly equipped with standard transmissions. I’m a small car buyer (never owned anything but) however all my cars except my first one have been standard, but I’m beginning to to have the opposite problem, namely can’t find many new cars that offer standard transmission at all. But at my age, I’ve pretty much decided my next car will need to be automatic. mostly because nobody left in my family can drive my car, and though thus far it has rarely been an issue, health issues have made driving my car a pain (some leg problems, and hand problem). Hard to imagine when I was younger, but I don’t take for granted what physical infirmities can do for mobility, particularly since I only have one car. The “without too many miles” requirement was likewise tough, since we live in a large (distance-wise) state, and I think particularly back then people would buy small cars for their fuel economy, and drive them till when they had a lot of miles on them but (hopefully) before they started giving them problems, so the number of cars with under 150K or so miles was pretty limited, especially in combination with the automatic transmission requirement.
One of the cars we looked at (can’t remember for which sister, it was so long ago) that met both requirements was an ’84 Isuzu I-Mark. We live in the sunbelt, so RWD wasn’t a drawback (we’d moved to the sunbelt after I’d skidded into a guardrail travelling to see my parents driving from where I was living during my first job in my light RWD small car, so I’d switched to FWD cars for my next purchase, and after that FWD became much more commonplace such that (combined with moving to the sunbelt) it was no longer an issue. However….it didn’t meet my sister’s elusive “style” requirement that made finding suitable cars even harder, and we took it off her list for this reason. I liked the I-Mark, but it missed her “mark”.
She ended up with a 1985 Nissan 200SX notchback…the first of two she was to eventually own (well, the 2nd was a 240SX but same basic model). The notchback wasn’t as common as the hatchback, and she wanted a notchback, and we finally found a suitable one. Not only that, but my other sister also ended up buying not just one, but two 240SX’s, both of them also notchbacks, and both of them automatics. She bought the last of the 240SX’s new in 1997 near the end of production (she’d gotten a job where she could afford a new car back then) and 24 years later she still owns the same car.
Yes, I know the I-Mark isn’t the same kind of car as a 200SX, but that’s part of the “fun” you get when shopping with your sister, unstated requirements which only come to the fore when you otherwise have found what you think is a good candidate for purchase, only to find out you missed the mark (wow, almost could have made a pun out of that).
One of my neighbors eventually bought an Impulse, but couldn’t find any of those that had automatic, plus, it was a hatchback, instead of a notchback….which would have been fine for the hatchback lover I am, but not for either of my younger sisters.