The Exige is little more than an Elise with a hard top and more aerodynamic bodywork, although only the doors and rocker panels are shared between the two cars. Both Lotuses use Toyota's high-revving, DOHC four-cylinder 2ZZ-GE engine. Basically, if you've driven an Elise, you've driven an Exige, which sounds and feels very similar. Its cabin is virtually identical, except ingress and egress are even more difficult in the Exige. The doors open only about 30 degrees, and the high, wide doorsills tighten the aperture. If you've removed the Elise's fabric roof, you can point your body upward as you emerge, but in the Exige, you just have to crawl out as best you can, leading online editor Mike Dushane to observe that "it's like extracting yourself from a wreck." The Exige's fiberglass roof is removable, but not quickly or easily.
Those sorts of compromises are, we suspect, acceptable to the Exige's target customers, who are even more hard-core than Elise buyers, who themselves are not exactly coming out of Coupe de Villes. The Exige was created for Lotus enthusiasts who want the ultimate track-day car, with the additional handling stability and aerodynamic downforce provided by the revised bodywork, the rear wing, and a lip spoiler. As with the Elise, Lotus equips the Exige with what it needs to get around a track or slice through the countryside with the greatest efficiency, and little more. These vehicles are half street car, half go-kart.
Both the Ferrari and the Exige are built on extruded-aluminum spaceframes. Lotus says the Exige chassis weighs only 150 pounds. Stick your head under one of the front fenders, and you can see the extrusions and the orange-colored industrial adhesive that holds them together. Actually, if you haven't opted for the $1350 touring package and its "full carpeting," the orange glue is visible in the passenger's footwell, too. Other options include traction control ($495); the track pack ($2495), which allows owners to adjust the Bilstein dampers, the front antiroll bar, and the ride height; and a limited-slip differential (packaged with traction control for $1790), developed by Lotus expressly for American autocrossers. Owners also can pay $250 to delete air-conditioning and save twenty-two pounds in curb weight, but perhaps it would just be easier to go on a diet.
Once you've folded yourself into the Exige, you'll settle into a comfortable and supportive, if thinly padded, driver's seat. Your right leg bangs against the center shift-linkage shroud, which seems to be fastened in place with a couple of paper clips, and you're likely to brush against your passenger's kneecap when you grab the shifter. You sit low to the ground, but forward visibility is good. The view to the rear, though, is severely compromised, because it's blocked by the engine lid's black mesh panels. You're almost better off at night, when at least you're aware of headlights behind you. We hope Lotus takes another stab at the packaging of the engine lid and its integrated rear wing.
The Exige's cable-operated six-speed manual, also from Toyota, is engineered for low friction and quick action, but the shift lever makes clunking noises as it moves through its gate. "If I owned an Exige," offered Sherman, "I would experiment with a shorter gear lever, because the effort is low enough to encourage true toggle-switch movements." Clutch engagement is fluid, and the pedals are ideally placed for heel-and-toe shifting, as long as you're wearing driving shoes. The gearshifting ergonomics are crucial, because you have to keep the revs up to make the most of the engine's modest 138 lb-ft of torque. The inexplicable lack of a visible redline on the tachometer is annoying, but a light illuminates at the 8000-rpm (sustained) and 8500-rpm (momentary) limits.
With 190 hp on hand to propel a car that weighs only 2015 pounds-31 pounds more than the Elise-the Exige's engine is plenty powerful and, as Sherman points out, "tuned to please a demanding driver who is inclined to hold the right pedal flat whenever possible." It is not tuned, naturally, for a Ferrari-style, mid-engine mechanical symphony. On the freeway, the Exige's cabin becomes a four-cylinder echo chamber, with huge booming resonances formed by a mixture of axle whine, wind and tire noise, and the engine's variable-valve-timing labors. ...next page >>