After a few years of //M cars and one very disasterous Porker, I finally parked my arse into the probax seat of an Exige S today for a wee test-drive. I liked it
Report (as taken from PH) below:
Whell...
In summary, I was well and truly bowled over. I've always thought Loti were rickety little things that only handled well by virtue of the fact there was nothing to them!
And yet, I was so painfully ignorant, it's embarrassing. Even looking at the thing, I could tell it was actually quite well screwed together, which is important; engineering integrity in a car matters to me (thank countless W124 Mercs during my childhood for that). Once I'd folded myself inside (a not so arduous task when you move the seat right back first), I was very impressed with the layout and again, the quality of the cabin. It's genuinely OK in there.
Once the banter with the salesman was out the way, we headed out into a cold and rather wet January day (not ideal conditions for an Exige I think you'll agree), and just 30 seconds later I was giggling like a schoolgirl; that supercharger whine is awesome!
Once clear of the city, I was really impressed with the quality of the damping. It's stiff, don't get me wrong, but the secondary ride is ideally matched to our roads (well it would be wouldn't it?), while the dampers soak up the bigger lumps and bumps without upsetting the car.
Traction control settings duly demonstrated, we swapped over and there my epiphany began.
Steering: wow; throttle, brake, clutch: wow; view out the windscreen: that'll be Group C racer right there; and then squeeze the throttle just a little further: WOW!
And there it was: within less than a minute I realised just how wrong I'd been all those years. This car is phenomenal! If I were to nit-pick, I'd say the throttle delay is a little awkward and the gearstick a little imprecise through it's gate; both of which make heel-toe downshifts a little more difficult than one might expect, but as a package, the Exige really is quite other worldly. I've never driven a proper racing car, but I reckon this thing comes pretty close to a road-going version of such. I'm hooked.
In truth, I was fearful that the little Toymota - supercharged or not, would feel like a wasp in a blender, but I needn't have worried. This thing is proper supercar quick and it even sounds awesome; not flat six awesome (nothing does IMO) but awesome in a quasi A-series Cooper S meets Formula Ford. I like. In fact, I like it a lot.
So, is it better than a GT3? Well if we compare apples with apples (i.e. equal price points) then I'd say it's potentially a better option for mortals like me who may occasionally balk at the running costs of 5 year old GT3, when actually using them for the purpose in which they were built. In fact I'd go as far to say that I should have bought one of these things at the start. There I said it
It's a bold statement, but I actually think the Lotus works better on the roads up here. The Porker (comfort or not) was nothing but fidgety on anything but billiard table smooth roads; and we don't have any of those up here. At the ring, things would be differ net and there's only one car which will do the far side of 190 and it ain't the Lotus. However, how many times am I in Germany? Now of course the Porker is the better car ultimately. In fact it is the ultimate, but when they get older and pass through some less than careful owners, the boundaries become blurred, things aren't so black and white.Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. And so the search begins.
