Lotus launches the new Exige Sport 410

[Mark030358]

I was actually going to ask what PASM is, but didn’t, thinking I sound like a tw@t. Now I read between the lines, and yep, Glad I didnt ask.as. They are for tw@ts... NO offence intended 👍❤️🤣🤣

Carry on Andy, nail on the head and all that...

 Cheers

Mark

[RoflOnMyWaffle]

4 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

 

Nothing. you are quite correect.

 

Really?  And you think it would be accurate in a car like an Exige when it is so variable in other cars with all that padding and softness?  My wife likes the auto climate control but interestingly in every car she drives she has it set to a different figure as they are no more consistent or reliable than any thing else. Each car make and model seems to think 17c is a different temperature - one of them (a Subaru Legacy) seems to think that is the temperature of an industrial fridge, the other, a Nissan Qashqai barely registers it as anything...  The Exige is a plastic car with a plastic roof that most people want to take off so quite why anyone would want any form of digital climate control just leaves me speechless at best, incandescent with impunity at worse!

I think where we differ is that I like my bling to be performance related - so carbon for panels and stuff as it saves weight - lightened wheels and brakes and bells and stuff.  The electronic stuff like "climate control" and PASM (though quite why we are talking about a Porsche system on a Lotus forum is beyond me) and ICE etc is just of no interest to me as it does not enrich my experience in a focused sports car.  Again, I realise I am probably in the minority here and if that is the case then this current generation of lotus cars will probably by the last that I truly lust after and my future Lotus acquisitions are as likely as not be from going back in time as opposed to forward into the future.

No, I agree.

I use 3 cars on a regular basis, and all 3 vary wildly.

However, I couldn't care less if the dial/gauge said 36 degrees C. If I'm cold that bitch is going higher. So a simple system is fine, but for £1000+ I expect better

[C8RKH]

1 hour ago, Arun_D said:

. I can't work out if it's genuinely accepted and preferred on here to be completely blinkered to a car's shortcomings . ..... and that can be done without a mass-impacting technofest that people are so worried about

@Arun_D you have hit the nail on the head for me.  I can accept that not having super bright headlights could be a shortcoming. And honestly, if they could be brighter without dazzling everyone else then of course I would not be against this development. It would be common sense to fix it and churlish to rile against it. You are quite correct.

However, the impending technofest I do indeed worry about.  To me, an edge of rawness is what makes a Lotus what it is. I want the more focused experienced and as a proud new owner of a 410 Sport I get the focused experience, and as an experienced owner of a VX220 I get the roof off rawness experience.  I honestly love my two cars the way they are - in fact, the 410 Sport is too soft and quiet for me and I am thinking about ripping out the NVH stuff and the ICE - the only thing I really want the ICE for is the reversing camera to be honest, oh, and the sat nav with the speed camera database on it

When I see people on here trying to justify expensive ICE, PASM, climate controls and all sorts of other such wizardry (we have had mention of radar controlled cruise control; active this and active that, etc.) then I just worry that we go down an increasingly anodyne technofest route (how many people have been salivating about the Geely Volvo tech and large LCD screens etc...) that digitises the Lotus "experience and feel" and just churns out yet another fast, safe, me-too Gran Turismo car to sit with every other bland fast, safe, me-too cars from the likes of Porsche, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and latterly McLaren et al.

@RoflOnMyWaffle it made me chuckle to see that you have a Playstation Gran Turismo Nismo 370z.  Are you able to reset the force feedback on the steering wheel whilst driving and when you crash does it auto fix and auto right itself too?  Lovely car for the younger generation than me. I admired one in the Nissan showroom last time we went to buy the wife a Qashqai. Some really nice detailing on it and looks aggressive.

As I said, I'm a dinosaur, maybe my time has come and I need to go out with some Dignitas!

[PaulLF1]

If I were to order a new Lotus, I would want no air conditioning, no radio, no sound deadening even. No technical wizardy.

Just the raw driving experience, seat, pedals, steering wheel, simple instruments for speed and revs, good brakes, good suspension, that is all you need.

 

[RoflOnMyWaffle]

@C8RKH It's a great car, for GT purposes.

It's comfy, quite loud when you want it to be, but best of all theres only 2 settings you can change. Traction on or traction off no sports mode or any of that crap. Nothing changes, no hard/soft suspesion modes, Nothing.

Satnavs good, reverse camera a must, and bluetooth music is useful.

Shame to see her go, as I'm sure not many people at 23 have owned one for a year since new hahaha but I lust for less GT and more fun.

[GFWilliams]

What a strange thread, I think what we can conclude is that different people want different things.  We're all drawn to Lotus for different reasons and have different opinions on how we would improve the cars.

Interestingly for me, the main reason I'd like a DSG/Sequential gearbox for my car is that I think the standard Manual gearbox is pretty rubbish and I'm always worrying about breaking it so have to bare that in mind when driving it.  Get in a Porsche with PDK and you can launch control and perfectly shift up and down every gear every time.  I love a manual gearbox, but even with fancy gear linkage, the Exige gearbox is still stressed and ultimately designed for a Camry.

Headlights... They're awful.  It's amazing that they passed regulation.

With regards to luxuries like a/c, climate control, entertainment systems, etc - it all depends on your use with the car. Some people on here do 200 miles per year of weekend driving, some do track work only and trailer it there, some do big road trips and others (me!) do a combination of all the above plus some drifting.  Of course, this usage will depend on what you want. For example I'd like better a/c as I'll be taking the car to Spain for summer.  I put in a subwoofer and love how I can now listen to music properly when on the motorway instead of just hearing tyre noise.  The traction control systems are a funny point of discussion, people say they don't want PASM, yet I can guarantee they'll be using race or sport mode on track.   I like drifting and a car moving about, yet still drive with traction control on when driving on the road as it means there's less chance I'll end up in a hedge.

 

[C8RKH]

29 minutes ago, PaulLF1 said:

If I were to order a new Lotus, I would want no air conditioning, no radio, no sound deadening even. No technical wizardy.

Just the raw driving experience, seat, pedals, steering wheel, simple instruments for speed and revs, good brakes, good suspension, that is all you need.

 

My perfect Exige 410/430 spec that @PaulLF1  if it had the 311 electronic dash too  with lap timer etc. ( I am not a complete technophobe! )

[The Pits]

2 hours ago, Arun_D said:

Even comparing to a Series 2 Elise / Exige, the latter of which I moved into the V6 platform from (now my 3rd V6), they are absolute pants. I can't work out if it's genuinely accepted and preferred on here to be completely blinkered to a car's shortcomings . The frustration is Lotus clearly get it right, and have done on previous models. Perception from a number of owners (new to the marque or not) is that it needs improving, and that can be done without a mass-impacting technofest that people are so worried about

Isn't it equally unacceptable to be obliged to agree with an angry mob and join in the derision even when you don't happen to agree? Genuine findings and opinions should be welcome in a forum whether or not you happen to agree with them.

I honestly can't remember driving either the Exige or Elise at night and thinking the headlights were utterly useless. The Elise had the extra driving lights so maybe that helped but you'd think I would have noticed the drop in illumination in the Exige, perhaps I didn't drive it at night very often. But I didn't even know it was a widely known issue. No-one would ever or could argue in favour of poor headlights, pretty absurd to suggest that some are. But if someone genuinely wasn't bothered by the headlights (or lack of) in 10 years why shouldn't they be able to mention that? Slagging off everyone in the forum seems to be something of an over reaction. Everyone here would welcome better headlights, could be time to move on from that now.

[Tex]

Lots of debate on what a Lotus should be and all correct as it is personal opinion.

I may be doing this to death but the only Exiges that Lotus now manufacturer that will get you on track are 350’s, which does seem very strange as they are marketed as potential track cars but clearly not for the UK though 

[PAR]

I think the lack of a track friendly exhaust option is the most puzzling. £500pound option that costs nothing to them, boom solved.

[The Pits]

Quite agree. Easy fix and I'm sure most would prefer a factory option if it were available, especially if it maintained the factory warranty.

Lotus Motorsport should be a thriving sub brand by now selling performance upgrades and generating plenty of revenue for Lotus. They must have their reasons for letting Komotec run off with the after market dollar. I'd love to know what they are just out of curiosity. Seems like a no brainer to me.

[vd9]

4 hours ago, The Pits said:

Never occurred to me once in 5 years with an Exige (10 if you could the Elise I owned before it) that there was an issue with the headlights. Then again, I'd never choose to drive fast at night so it never bothered me. I guess it depends on what you're comparing it to.

I do have one car with very good lights and I'm being constantly flashed by cars coming the other way at night who think I'm on main beam. That is far more irritating I can assure you.

Occurs to me every time I drive it at night and it has nothing to do with driving fast at night - I have zero intention to drive with any speed when I can't see a thing. Just to poke a wasps nest little bit - every time I am driven by my wife in her Macan with PDLS Plus it truly shocks me how much more the car's headlights can help. Never see anyone flashing her thinking she's on the hjigh beam (they even have an automated system to automatically control the high beam/low beam, should you like to use it)

3 hours ago, Arun_D said:

Perception from a number of owners (new to the marque or not) is that it needs improving, and that can be done without a mass-impacting technofest that people are so worried about

Absolutely yes, they just need to sort out the headlights in the same physical analog manner as they've finally managed to sort out the seat runners ☺️

2 hours ago, Bibs said:

I thought they were shocking 4 years ago, borderline dangerous in the car I was driving. The running lights were almost as bright. 

I fully agree it is borderline dangerous and it is indeed the case that I am sometimes flashed from behind as I do occasionally unintentionally just drive with DRLs and not headlights - they are in many cases brighter 😨

2 hours ago, C8RKH said:

Really?  And you think it would be accurate in a car like an Exige when it is so variable in other cars with all that padding and softness?  My wife likes the auto climate control but interestingly in every car she drives she has it set to a different figure as they are no more consistent or reliable than any thing else. Each car make and model seems to think 17c is a different temperature - one of them (a Subaru Legacy) seems to think that is the temperature of an industrial fridge, the other, a Nissan Qashqai barely registers it as anything...  The Exige is a plastic car with a plastic roof that most people want to take off so quite why anyone would want any form of digital climate control just leaves me speechless at best, incandescent with impunity at worse!

No, I do not want it to be 17C when the knob is at 17C, I just want the temperature to be stable if the knob is not moving through the virtue of automatic control of the temperature of the air supplied and ventilator speed as to get closer to the target temperature (whatever it is and however it matches the number on the knob). I have no idea how this is contradicting benefits of performance and lightness , what does it have to do with PASM, and why having automatically adjustable climate control is going to harm your excitement about Lotus. In the same way we can start talking about disgrace of using ECU and vote for the good old days of carburettors? Just in case, A/C is already electronic stuff as it is connected to the ECU 🙄

1 hour ago, C8RKH said:

the only thing I really want the ICE for is the reversing camera to be honest, oh, and the sat nav with the speed camera database on it

When I see people on here trying to justify expensive ICE, PASM, climate controls and all sorts of other such wizardry

Please do not take this as an offence, but the combination of the two statements is to me one of the finest examples of hypocrisy

1 hour ago, PaulLF1 said:

Just the raw driving experience, seat, pedals, steering wheel, simple instruments for speed and revs, good brakes, good suspension, that is all you need.

I've happily and with no regrets done >10,000mi in the first ~8 months (including not many enough trackdays, going to Waitrose, going to the airport on the motorway, trip to Wales, etc.) - it does matter a bit to have some basics right. Decent headlights and the most basic climate control are those basics. As well as seat runners and at least slightly watertight windows. In my car they successfully addressed the former, but not the latter.

1 hour ago, GFWilliams said:

With regards to luxuries like a/c, climate control, entertainment systems, etc - it all depends on your use with the car. Some people on here do 200 miles per year of weekend driving, some do track work only and trailer it there, some do big road trips and others (me!) do a combination of all the above plus some drifting.

Can't agree more - it really depends if one uses it as a car or as a fetish. I prefer to use it as a car, but there is certainly no problem with either of the choices, just different requirements associated with those 😊

23 minutes ago, Tex said:

I may be doing this to death but the only Exiges that Lotus now manufacturer that will get you on track are 350’s, which does seem very strange as they are marketed as potential track cars but clearly not for the UK though 

Absolutely totally fact. Even more so I understand that they've got dozens of questions on this matter over the last year and still there is no interest to do anything helpful. Good part of the decision to go for Sport 350 for me was to be able to actually drive it - happy with the choice

Phew, a lot of typing. Hopefully not offensive to anyone, just genuine findings and opinions. 🙊

[GFWilliams]

@The Pits - sounds like you got the VIP Lotus headlight option. Us mere mortals can only dream of owning a Lotus which allows us to actually see when on dipped beam at night.

[NedaSay]

On 05/05/2018 at 11:11, GFWilliams said:

My point above was that Caterham make a 620R with a sequential. Would be great to see Lotus do a limited edition which was aimed totally at the track, but you can drive to the track too. (maybe without the stupidly loud exhaust too?)

I think many would like Lotus to provide their cars with a sequential gearbox, however there might be a problem when it comes to Lotus V6 application... Torque imput and engine layout. The tranverse  GR-FE V6 in either 400, 410, 430 and "surely upcoming" 4XX  does produce 400+nm of torque. I believe that if you give it the full beans treatment and raise the redline to 7200 rpm the GR-FE will actually generate easily in excess of 500 nm and 500 bhp. Right now we know that the 3-Eleven Race which kept the redline at 7000 rpm generated 525nm in order to cope with that Lotus fitted its track only 7 speed AMT sourced from Xtrac. This is a race derived gearbox that requires rebuild every now and "soon"

So if people want "dailyability" Lotus needs a transverse compatible DCT that can cope with a torque imput of about 500 nm to be on the safe side. As of now I think only Getrag and Borg Warner have them but they've been developed for their respective partners Mercedes-Benz for the A45 AMG (7DCT500) , and Audi for the RS3. I believe both applications are proprietary.  Getrag did communicate briefly on their 7DCT500 before pulling the info.  

Even with Geely's support, I don't quite see them getting these gearboxes. Lotus may therefore develop its application of Aisin AW 8 speed AW8G45 which should  cope with 480+nm and is already in use throughout the Geely group (Volvo V60 polestar) alternatively and this would be a long shot Lotus could develop Geely's own 7 speed DCT but at the moment it has only been developed and manufactured for cars developing up to 330nm of torque so the only car that could use it would be the Elise.

[C8RKH]

@vd9 no worries re offence as I have never taken myself serious enough to take offence!

As for climate control. In a Lotus. Utter pish. My S1 Evora NA with the knob stable I never had an issue re the ac temperature not being stable. Same in my 410. Maybe Im just lucky or a fool. Either way I am happy.

As for the hypocrisy. I'm lost. I was talking about expensive ICE ( my disdain about how you can really get high fidelity sound in a plastic bath tub is well documented on here  as is my laughing at people who pay a lot of money to get it - ( did I mention I only have 28% hearing in my left ear?  Pardon! What was that? ) and saying all I wanted was the reversing camera and sat nav with speed cameras. That can be achieved cheaply with an Android device. So where is the hyprocracy? Shit, something else I have lost along with my marbles.

But heh ho. I'm happy to add hypocrite to my other titles of old fat grumpy grouchy bastard.... lol....

 

[Swiss380Cup]

Did Lotus succeed in getting people fed up with new models every 2 months ????? ..... they launch an extraordinary 410 Charge cooled Exige and people argue about headlights and A/C...... strange world...... people get used to novelties very easily it appears.... maybe the crowd will get alive again with the last 500 Exige Charge Cooled with Harrops TVS 1900 for Christmas 2019.......?????

[Guest]

2 hours ago, NedaSay said:

 

Even with Geely's support, I don't quite see them getting these gearboxes. Lotus may therefore develop its application of Aisin AW 8 speed AW8G45 which should  cope with 480+nm and is already in use throughout the Geely group (Volvo V60 polestar) alternatively and this would be a long shot Lotus could develop Geely's own 7 speed DCT but at the moment it has only been developed and manufactured for cars developing up to 330nm of torque so the only car that could use it would be the Elise.

Lotus is owned by Geely.

Geely is the 1st stocks holder of MercedesBenz.

So tomorrow if they want the 45AMG gearbox could be at hethel

:-D 

[mycerbera]

Anyway... Getting back to my original post topic (the new 410 not headlights lol)... Has anyone driven one yet? FEEDBACK be good!.. Also has anyone got any photos of the 350 Sport with the new updated front end etc?

[nerobi]

 

[RoflOnMyWaffle]

I don't get it?

I thought the roadsters couldn't have wings and splitters for aero reasons?

[mark248am]

18 minutes ago, nerobi said:

 

Can't see the slots for the soft top, so I'm presuming its the regular hard top version and they've just removed the roof?

[Neal H]

14 hours ago, RoflOnMyWaffle said:

I don't get it?

I thought the roadsters couldn't have wings and splitters for aero reasons?

They changed their minds on that when they launched the 350 Roadster. People had removed the roofs anyway and nobody died. Same with the original Elise Cup cars.

[RoflOnMyWaffle]

I've never seen a 350 sport roadster with the wing or splitter, were they optional? I agree though, it was a stupid decision cause nobody is gonna do 140+MPH without a roof anyways, surely??

https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/lotus/exige-s3/lotus-exige-sport-350-roadster-new/6497718

https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/lotus/exige-s3/lotus-exige-sport-350-2016/7856130

[Neal H]

It's possible that it was a factory option, but Lotus were certainly factory fitting it to the Exige 350 Roadster.

[Arun_D]

The Geneva 350 Roadster launch car had both, at least.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/british/its-lotus-exige-sport-350-roadster