2016 Lotus Exige Sport 350 review with price, horsepower and photo gallery

LIGHTER, MORE CONTROLLED AND AN ADRENALINE RUSHWhat is it? Let’s start with the bad news: The Lotus Exige Sport 350 is not U.S. road legal. The good news? Lotus already sells around 50 Elise and Exige models annually here, where they’re used on-track and raced in the Lotus Cup U.S.A. So if you really want an Exige Sport 350 and you’re happy to just drive round in circles at high speed, you can.There’s some even better news, too: New Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales recently told Autoweek he wanted the U.S. to become Lotus’s biggest global market. So the next Elise and Exige — successor to the Sport 350 we’re testing — will be federalized for the U.S. when the new models land in 2019 or ’20. So this drive gives a taste of what’s heading our way.Lotus has a storied history in the U.S., not least Jim Clark’s 1965 Indy 500 win, the first for a mid-engine race car. Fifty years on, the Exige Sport 350 holds true to founder Colin Chapman’s vision of “adding lightness.”The Exige first bowed in 2000 as a hardcore coupe version of the Elise roadster. In 2012, Lotus put more fresh air between the two, replacing the Exige’s four-cylinder motor with the same Toyota-sourced and supercharged 3.5-liter V6 found in the Evora. It created the Exige S, the only new Lotus launched under previous boss Dany Bahar, who promised a radical product blitz. In the U.S., we get it as the track-only V6 Cup, an even more track-focused, lighter version costing $99,950. The Sport 350 basically evolves the Exige S, but laps faster and is 11 pounds lighter than the V6 Cup. For now, Lotus intends to keep

Источник: 2016 Lotus Exige Sport 350 review with price, horsepower and photo gallery

2016 Lotus Exige Sport 350 review with price, horsepower and photo gallery