What is your opinion of the Lotus Exige?

Expensive Toy.

 

Corner carving bumble bee.

I LOVE them.

 

Cayman is better in every objective respect... but I'd still have a hard time choosing.

 

great track car

 

+1


If its mostly for street use the Elise is better. I had an Elise and my close friend has and Exige and an Elise

 

You had an Elise?


[computer voice] Does not compute...

 

bit of an open ended question - its a road registered track car and as such has compromises on the road. For what intended use is the question aimed?


Loads of specific info on www.lotustalk.com (but will have a different slant on the opinion you have requested )

 

haha, that's what I thought too

I love the Elise/Exige. great performance, unique, and "cheap" enough that I wouldn't be terrified to actually use the performance. on a track, of course.

 

I had an Elise which I loved...I am not sure about the Exige though as it is more expensive and slower than the Elise. The Exige is suppose to handle better and generate more down force. Which is all fine and good but the Elise is the best handling road car I have ever driven, has a removable roof and costs less money...

 

The Lotus is a fantastic car for people who remember what a true sports car is supposed to be. If you need to be coddled by extraneous luxury options that add weight and kill performance the Elise/Exige line isn't for you. On the other hand, if you want to treat freeway ramps like the karrousel at the Ring and you enjoy the sensation of driving a road-legal go kart by all means give a Lotus a shot.

The cars we call sports cars today are really shrunken Cadillacs with every possible luxury item crammed inside and enough electronic aids to make a monkey look like Nuvolari behind the wheel. If your aim is to impress girls and draw the envy of gold-chainers then skip the Lotus, but if you wanna have fun, drive your car rather than just steer it and experience why light is right, then try the Lotus.

 

I want one.

 

What he said.

 

I have an '08 Exige S 240 and a Cayman S. Exige is far, far more fun to drive on the track. Oh, and to the poster above, the Exige roof is removable (and I have done so). It, in its current version, is faster than an Elise. It is fun to to drive on the street as well, as long as you are out to drive. If you are running errands though, it sucks. Cayman S is a superbly balanced car, but unexciting compared to an Exige.

 

I had an Elise in 2005 and at that time the Exige was slower but now they have more powerful ones I guess...as to the removable roof I will take your word for it...I guess I have just never seen one with the top off and assumed it was strictly a hard top.

 

exige would eat a cayman on the track, no contest there.

cayman is a more practical street car

its my understanding the exige s, with the supercharger, roof is not removable

regular exige, no supercharger, roof is removable

car is MUCH easier to get in/out without the roof

 

I've driven Elise and Exiges and remain thoroughly unimpressed. It's all the impracticality of a Caterham with none of the performance, in my opinion. That extra 1000 pounds of weight just kills the experience. My Caterham R500 arrives in a week or so; I drove the Top Gear R500 test car in the UK and the car is just unbelievable. I can't actually recall how much faster it was than the Enzo with the Stig driving around the Top Gear test track, but it was a wide margin, over a second. I think it was more than 7 SECONDS a lap quicker than the Exige S. For the same price as the Exige, with 0-60 in 2.8 and handling to match, I'll choose the Caterham every time. It's all relative, but in my circle of friends, the Exige is the shrunken Cadillac with the gold chain-wearing driver, but I agree with the principle expressed above- light is right!

 

I have had an Exige for the past two years. Its been a great track car. Very reliable and very fast with low consumables. While the Corvette and Viper guys are bleeding their brakes between sessions, the Lotus keeps on going and going. Mine has is the normally aspirated version with 190hp, and it is alot of fun tracking down and passing cars with twice the horsepower. Typically, the only cars that are quicker are on slicks and are trailered in.

It is not a bad daily driver as long as you don't have to get in and out of it frequently or parallel park. Mileage is in the high 20's and, since the drivetrain is stock Toyota, the base car should be long lasting. The non-Toyota bits are rather flimsy, but that's expected. As others have mentioned, the Cayman S is quite boring in comparison but much more of a real car. 99% of the population will find the Exige to be a toy that is too bare bones to be a normal car, but I like it that way. It keeps to poseurs away.

 

The roof is non-structural and removable on all models except the original S1. There is some suggestion that its removal reduces the air into the intercooler on the supercharged models - but ti seems negligible.

 

Brilliant car! Owned one for some time. tracked it heavily and it was a ball! Plus being at a lower price point vs a F-Car orL-Car. Fuel efficient and gets stares like an exotic. With resale values falling even on late model low mileage cars, they are a TRUE bargain!

Good luck with the decision!

 

I currently have an Exige S and an Elise. They're absolutely fantastic cars if you're a purist. You can't drive another factory car that handles the way an Exige does. The car almost predicts what your brain wants to do, yet does it better.

On a tight track, the new `09 Exige S 260 will keep up with almost anything on the road. It is a jackrabbit from the line, you can brake much later, enter a turn much faster, and has explosive acceleration in the 0-100 range.

The achiles heel for the Lotus is straight line performance faster than 100mph. 100-150 will not come as quickly as on other cars. You will lose any gains you made in tight turns if you're on a track with long straightaways. It just doesn't have the HP to keep up with an F430, Z06, GTR, GT3 etc... on long straightaways. With an aftermarket blower however, you may get 300HP out of one which will vastly improve top end performance. (They only weigh around 2000 pounds.)

For me, I don't use either car as a daily driver. Someone once said that using an Exige as a daily driver is like wearing a tuxedo to go to the supermarket. They're very raw. They're very fragile. (You should never parallel park one.) They're a b!tch to get in and out of. There is little trunk room. They're miserable in bumper to bumper traffic. The AC blows warm and the heat blows cold. Power windows are the only luxury on the car.

The truth is, they will make any P-car feel like a Cadillac after one drive. If you want a "pure" driving experience, I highly suggest buying one. (Or two.)

 

I've got an '06 Exige (the non-supercharged version) and absolutely love it. Yes, it can be annoying to drive in traffic but when I do take it out, I'm normally on nothing but backroads, the twistier the better, and that's where it shines. Yeah, it might be a little "slower" 0-60 than an Elise (NA) and a touch heavier but it also has more downforce so like everything in life, there's a trade off. It's just a blast to drive. With all the aftermarket support/parts available any year or model can be made just about as fast as the next so it depends on how much OEM you want vs. how much you want to make it your own. There are SC kits out putting between 220rwhp and 275rwhp vs. the 162rwhp the NA cars put out stock. Keep in mind its only 2000lbs. Check out LotusTalk.com as has been suggested or post up any more specific questions you've got.

To be honest though, the only reason I've got an Exige vs. an Elise with a bunch of aero goodies is because a local owner just happened to have one for sale with all the options, colors, and condition I was looking for in an Elise. I prefer the look of the Exige though so when it became available, it was a no brainer.

FYI: The roof can be removed from ALL YEARS of Exige but on the intercooled ones, it will more than likely decrease airflow over the IC.

 

In my experience if you want to give your passenger a thrill; wide open throttle from 60-130 in a Maserati/Corvette will do it. If you want to scare the hell out of them; a series of high speed turns in a sub 2000 pound car are the appropriate tool for the job

Enjoy the Exige S, I've only driven the 190hp Elise but I had more fun with it than cars costing 3x more.

 

...i've daily driven my elise up to 70,000 miles now and absolutely adore it...

...it's a raw, pure, intimate driving experience just-domesticated-enough not to feel out of place on civilised public roads, a hand-built exotic with surprisingly affordable ownership costs...the exige is much the same: it trades off a little daily-drivability, acceleration, and top speed in favor of track handling, but honestly the performance differences between the two models are negligible by comparison to driver skill...

...as noted above, it'll fall behind high-power touring cars in straight lines over one-twenty, but there are very few road cars which can keep up with an exige in the hands of skilled driver under one hundred miles per hour, at any price...just like any good mid-engined car, it takes a little practice to safely bring out its best - the demon of snap oversteer is always waiting there to bite the uninitiated - but it rewards measured car control in spades...

...it's a finely-balanced precision instrument, a bare-metal sportscar without peer this side of a dedicated track machine, and a beautifully-crafted work of aircraft hangar duct-tape engineering...if you can appreciate its rough edges for the character they bring to that throwback equation, you'll fall in love without fail...

...somehow, my passengers keep interpreting turns taken at triple the posted speed as reason to ask that i drive like i valued their lives...

"...but i do value your life - that's why i roll on the throttle so decisively before the tail breaks loose!.."