The equivalently-priced Cayman GTS
comes close at 340ps, but the Exige's 295lb ft of torque beats the Porsche's
280lb both by numbers and feel. The naturally aspirated Porsche may set the
hairs on your neck tingling, but it needs revs to deliver its best. The
immediate punch of the supercharged Lotus - and its lack of weight - means it
feels much, much faster across the board.
Its nearest on-paper rival in terms of price and lightweight minimalism
is probably the more exotic looking Alfa Romeo 4C.
Its fancy carbon fibre tub may mean it's lighter, but its turbocharged
four-cylinder engine can't keep tabs with the sheer grunt of the Lotus's
V6.
The Lotus also shows up the Alfa in
terms of handling. Wisely there are no significant tweaks to the suspension,
beyond a sharpening of the camber and toe to dial out the initial under steer
present in the original S. The non-assisted steering is heavy at low speed, but
wonderfully communicative at pace, feeding back nuances of grip and road
surface through microscopic shifts in weight through the tiny rim.
This makes it a delight to drive right up to the clearly
telegraphed limits, the performance fully exploitable even on a greasy track or
wintry Norfolk B-road because you feel so intimately involved in what the car
is doing. It may be a touch more pointy at the front end, but the Exige still
has a very safe set-up, gently sharpening its line with a lift of the throttle
and offering scope to get more creative with its cornering stance if you so
wish.
The clever 'Race' mode of the Lotus Dynamic Performance
Management stability control gives you enough leeway to explore this, while
maintaining a safety net if you over step the mark. Even fully disengaged the
Exige remains predictable, fun and un-threatening, though.
The Exige was always the hardcore, track-day-ready
version though, coming with a fixed rather than fabric roof and increasingly
potent states of tune in keeping with its enthusiast focus. Then the arrival of
the supercharged V6 engine from the Evora S in 2012 brought about a very
different Exige S, one far more potent and rapid than any that had gone
before.
Roadster, automatic and race-ready Cup versions built by
Lotus Motorsport have followed, but with this new Sport 350 Lotus has brought
the pace of the most extreme variants into its standard Exige. And it's done it
in a very Lotus way - primarily by removing weight.
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