Auto News and Reviews

The new 2006 Lotus Exige is a true driver’s car. Ok so the Elise is a driver’s car, but the Exige takes it to a whole new level. Although it may just look like an Elise with a hardtop, Lotus claims that the two cars share almost no body pieces.

The Lotus Exige uses the same 190hp Toyota inline 4 as the Elise. Though slightly heavier, what with the gigantic rear wing and the roof, it still weighs in at just a hair over 2,000 pounds, meaing each horse pulls just 10.6 pounds. Thus the little Toyota engine has enough to get you to 60mph in 4.9 seconds, and to a top speed of about 150 mph.

But as with the Elise, the Exige is not about straight line performance. The jarring ride of the Elise seems downright cushy when compared to the Exige. If you can live with that, though, you’ll find the handling is phenomenal. This is the perfect track day car that can be driven home when you’re done.

Reviews

Automobile Magazine writes:

The essence of the new Lotus Exige is that of a racing car. Even compared with the Elise, this bewinged coupe is a hard-core driving experience-and we mean that in a good way. What’s curious is that from the same set of basic components-190-hp, 1.8-liter, four-cylinder Toyota engine; click-clack-shifting six-speed manual gearbox; extruded aluminum chassis; plastic body-Lotus has created a pair of cars sufficiently different in character that the coupe version can be regarded as a genuinely separate model. A quicker, more extreme, yet separate model.

Car and Driver says:

If the only thing keeping you from snapping up a Lotus Elise is that you just don’t think it’s sporty enough, you are clearly insane, Caterham-breath. But Lotus is a niche manufacturer and as such is going after people who think the Elise is too posh with the new Exige, a car that Group Lotus CEO Kim Ogaard-Nielsen refers to as an “Elise on steroids.”

Autoweek writes:

Using the Elise chassis as a starting point, the Exige’s bodywork produces nearly 100 pounds of downforce at 100 miles per hour, according to Lotus. This The additional downforce allows Exige to corner faster than the Elise, with the Exige turning laps nearly two seconds faster at Lotus’ Hethel test track than the Elise. New bodywork on the Exige includes an aerodynamic splitter at the lower edge of the front bodywork, a sculpted hardtop and engine bay cover, side intake scoops and a rear wing. While the additional bodywork adds about 30 pounds over an Elise, the Exige will still weigh just slightly more than 2000 pounds.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Lotus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.