Breakdowns, Bank Robberies, and Other True Stories of Jim Henson’s Kermit-Looking Lotus Eclat

"I’ve always enjoyed cars—and I enjoy being in love with my car,” journaled Jim Henson, father of the Muppets, in 1978. He was remarking on his new 1978 Lotus Éclat, which had Kermit the Frog eyes and bright green paint. But while the Lotus is a well-known celebrity curio, its real story is less so. For example, it's paint wasn't actually matched to Kermit's particular hue. That’s one of many truths we discovered while compiling the car’s untold history, with help from none other than Jim’s son Brian Henson.

Like his career as a puppeteer and filmmaker, Brian inherited an interest in cars from his father. Jim Henson famously attended his college graduation in a Rolls-Royce, took interest in Porsches ahead of the curve, and also strayed into Jaguar territory. His single best-known car however may have been his Lotus, whose history Brian recounted for us, sharing unheard stories from his father’s ownership as well as what the car meant to him personally.

Predating the Muppets’ peak popularity, Car-mit (as some have called it) ironically came about not due to the Muppets’ success, but because of how hard it had been to get them on the air. Speaking to The Drive, Brian Henson recalled his father’s struggles getting U.S. TV networks to take the Muppets seriously. They’d been hits on children’s programming and the inaugural 1975 run of “Saturday Night Live,” but American networks just wouldn’t bite on the 1974 or 1975 pilot episodes for “The Muppet Show.” That’s where Lord Lew Grade stepped in.

The British media mogul, known best for “Thunderbirds” and “The Prisoner,” invited Henson to produce his show in England, and the rest is history. In late 1976, “The Muppet Show” kicked itself a foothold on both sides of the Atlantic en route to winning multiple Emmy Awards, and establishing its characters as pop cultural icons to people of all ages. Lord Grade was instrumental in helping Henson’s Muppets make their first steps, and it was thanks to him that Car-mit came into existence.

Henson’s Lotus was a spec’d-up Éclat, basically a fastback version of the Elite. It had a 2.0-liter inline four, a three-speed automatic transmission, and of course, Kermit-green paint. Or at least, as close as Lotus could get.

“Lew had contacted Lotus and said, ‘you have to mix up a special color, and it has to be Kermit green,’” Brian Henson told us. But while most sources claim the car ended up paint-to-sample Kermit-green, that isn’t true. According to Lotus archivists, Henson’s Éclat was painted regular Mint Green. Still a rare color, but not the unique touch it’s often claimed to be. Instead, the personal detail was added later: those Kermit pupils on its pop-up headlights. Brian speculates they were the idea of one of the London Muppet workshop techs, either Bonnie Erickson or Amy Van Gilder.

“Amy is the type that just makes everything into a puppet,” Brian recalled. “The eyes open up with the headlights. So, yeah, for a little while they had the pupils in there, but I don't think it was legal to keep those pupils covering your headlights. So I don't think he kept them there.”

Visibility was important, as the Éclat was Henson’s daily driver while in Britain—despite almost being too small for him. Brian recalled how “it was a pretty tight fit for my dad in a Lotus.” Because Brian was in the U.K. somewhat often, he has many memories of riding in the Éclat on summer break, as well as how the car enabled his dad’s need for speed.

“The backseats were kid-size,” Brian remembered. “I could fit in the backseat really easily. But I do remember once watching an adult trying to get in the backseat and it was pretty tough.”

“There are width restrictions on the fastest route to Elstree [Studios where The Muppet Show was filmed,]” Brian said. “It's got big steel bars that are six-foot-six-inches across, and I remember my dad could clear it with not an inch and a half on either mirror. So, he would just keep trying to do it faster, and faster, and faster. And he got to the point where he could pretty much go through those [at] maybe 30, 35 miles an hour, which is pretty impressive.”

“I would pretty much go to work with my dad every morning. They would do read-through and rehearsals on Sundays, pre-records on Mondays, shooting Tuesday, Wednesday, and maybe a little bit of Thursday. But I would pretty much always go to work. That's what I liked to do, was hang out at the studio and with the puppet builders and the puppeteers.”