308 - 328 handling question

I was looking at the underside of my Lotus Esprit and still admire the way the chassis was developed for handling. so, I looked up images of the chassis of a 308-328 and notice many engineering idea changes.

The Esprit chassis is backbone with the engine sitting in a cradle of sorts and the gearbox is aft of the engine. the 308 series was sitting sideways but my question is, was the 308 series a good handling car ?

the Esprit is similar to a race car chassis with adjustable control arms, fancy schmancy uprights and lower swing axel type control arms which probably really helped with handling.

was the 308 series built with that sort of handling in mind ?

when I see the chassis of a 308 series car I see many square tubes and bracing underneath which was totally different from the Lotus engineering team ideas.

just curious

Brian