VIDEO: Lotus Exige Sport 350 makes lightness a virtue

The famous Colin Chapman mantra, “simplify, then add lightness” is still alive at Hethel, it seems, with the new Lotus Exige Sport 350 – and the company is keen to stress that with a new video, showing how its latest offering shed the kilos.

Replacing the Exige S, the Sport 350 drops 51 kg over its predecessor – plenty when the old car weighed just 1,175 kg in the first place. The savings come courtesy of, among many other changes, a louvred rear engine cover (-3 kg), an exposed gearshift design (-1.5 kg) and lighter HVAC piping (-3 kg). The battery and engine mounts are also lighter, while the sound insulation has been optimised for even more weight-shedding.

The result is a kerb weight of just 1,125 kg, or 1,115 kg with the optional lightweight forged alloy wheels and vented two-piece brake discs. Although the Toyota-sourced supercharged 3.5 litre VVT-i V6 – producing 345 hp at 7,000 rpm and 400 Nm of torque at 4,500 rpm – is unchanged, the drop in weight has enabled the Sport 350 to sprint from 0-100 km/h in just 3.9 seconds, a tenth of a second faster than the Exige S.

That’s with the standard, heavily-revised six-speed manual transmission from the Evora 400; with the optional six-speed auto, the car does the 0-100 km/h sprint slightly quicker at 3.8 seconds, but is accompanied by a lower top speed (261 km/h vs 274 km/h) and an extra 5 kg in weight. The Sport 350 is capable of lapping the Hethel track with a time of 1 min 29.8 seconds, 2.5 seconds faster than the previous model.

The Lotus Exige Sport 350 goes on sale in Europe in February 2016 starting from £55,900 (RM359,800), and will be available outside Europe (excluding North America) from March 2016.

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