Lotus Exige S

If you�re punting along in your Euro-express and suddenly notice an Exige S in the rear vision (and I guarantee you will recognise this car) best you move across a lane.

But when you hit anything that remotely resembles a bend in the road, you should pull over and let the Lotus do its thing. Whatever you do, don�t under any circumstances, try and go with it. You�ll lose or worse still, come a cropper.
If you stand back and fully appreciate what Lotus have achieved with the Exige S, you�ll be hard pressed finding any fault. This is truly, the performance �bang for buck� king.

Even in standard guise, this is a seriously rapid car. By standard guise, I mean the 1.8-litre, supercharged, Toyota engine, putting out an unremarkable 163kW of power and 215Nm of torque.

Doesn�t sound like that much, I can hear you all muttering. Wrong! Power, and power alone, is not what Lotus is about. Power-to-weight, is infinitely more important and Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, wrote the book on that.

Although heavier than the Elise at 935 kg, the Exige S can shred the 0-100 km/h dash, in 4.3 seconds. Just for the record, the power-to-weight ratio, is an astonishing 174kW per tonne.

But this isn�t the standard Exige S we have parked in the CarAdvice garage, no sir, this version is from the dark side. Something even more sinister. Say hello to the Exige S Performance Pack.

I�d rather Lotus called it by its proper name, the �Exige S Sport 240, the badge applied to the limited edition cars, which Lotus Australia previously prepared.