Lotus continues to embed its founder Colin Chapman’s philosophy that lightness improves performance by pruning 51kg of weight from the Exige Sport 350, the successor to the Exige S.
The new Exige Sport 350 (above) is the third model in the Lotus range to carry the ‘Sport’ badge, joining the recently named Lotus Elise Sport and Elise Sport 220.
The Exige Sport 350, Elise Sport and Elise Sport 220, will be available in New Zealand towards the middle of next year, following the arrival in the next few months of the Lotus Evora 400. The Exige Sport 350 roadster will land later next year.
That means five new Lotus cars will hit the New Zealand market in 2016, a first for the Malaysian-owned British carmaker. No word on prices yet.
The Exile Sport 350 weighs in at 1125kg and is powered by a supercharged 3.5-litre V6 engine delivering 258kW at 7000rpm and 400Nm at 4500rpm and driving the rear wheels via a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic gearbox.
Lotus claims a 0-100km/h sprint time of 3.9 seconds for the manual and 3.8 seconds for the ‘auto. Top speeds are respectively 274km/h and 261km/h.
A video showing some of the areas where weight savings have been made, together with a glimpse of the performance of the Sport 350 variant accompanies this story.