Lotus is a name we all know about and admire. The cars that have come out of this company have been some of the most exotic and perfectly built driving machines for many years to give us a wide variety of awesome driving cars to be enjoyed. The announcement has been made that a new Lotus has been built and offered that will not be brought across the Atlantic for us to take advantage of in the US. Even though we won’t see it here, it’s certainly worth the discussion to see if this would be a car we want to have in the US to drive; which you can bet it certainly is.
This new Lotus is called the Exige Sport 350 and is a product of the Lightweight Laboratory to come in weighing only 2,480 pounds. This is a full 112 pounds lighter than the Exige S to give us a car that continues to be lighter and more feature laden than ever before. What we see is a perfectly designed car that has a louvered trunk panel, a lighter battery, lightweight engine mounts, a lightweight center console that offers an exposed gearshift mechanism, lighter HVAC pipework and a fully optimized use of the sound insulation.
The engine we will see for this new car is the supercharged 3.5-liter V6 engine that gives you 345 horsepower and 295 lb.-ft. of torque that can help this car reach sixty mph in only 3.7 seconds with a top speed of 170 mph. When you add the automatic transmission to this car you actually see an improvement in the times and speed to have a car that can perform extremely well. With this straight line speed and quickness you need to have a way to drive this car that will give you the drive you want to enjoy.
In order to have a fantastic ride in the Lotus Exige Sport 350 the car has firmer dampers and improved suspension geometry to offer a more responsive handling. This setup delivers more responsive handing for you to enjoy and lowers the center of gravity. This along with the four-piston brake calipers this car adds even more control to the car which has already been able to best the Exige S by 2.5 seconds on the test track, making this one of the fastest Lotus models every to be built.
As this car will only be available in Europe the Exige Sport 350 will be limited in range and production. As one of the highest performing sports cars being made by a company we have long admired the fact this car won’t cross the Atlantic is reason enough for us to put our hands up in protest. Maybe with a signed petition we can get Lotus to expand its market, or it’s even possible, the car will eventually be brought here but just not this year. For now all we can do is look on and admire this car from afar as its kept out of our hands for now.
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