What's the news?
Another day, another lighter, faster and more focused version of an already pretty rapid model in the Lotus Portfolio. This time, the newcomer is the Exige Sport 350 Roadster.
Exterior
At the end of 2015, the hard-topped Exige was given the Sport 350 treatment and so the Roadster had to follow. What's most surprising is that, unlike for other cars, whipping the roof off has actually made this latest Sport Lotus lighter than its coupé sibling by 40kg. With a lithium-ion battery, sylph-like forged alloy wheels, cross-drilled and vented two-piece brake discs, lighter engine mounts and a load of carbon fibre - for the louvered tailgate, side air intakes, seats and the composite front access panel - the Sport 350 Roadster clocks in at just 1,085kg, making it the lightest possible variant of Exige.
The Exige Sport 350 Roadster debuted at the Geneva Motor Show and featured a full Carbon Aero Pack, comprising a front splitter, rear wing and rear diffuser, with Lotus' CEO Jean-Marc Gales saying: "We achieved so much when developing the Exige Sport 350, reducing weight and making it even sharper and tightly focused; and the Exige Sport 350 Roadster takes this yet further. Yet again we've been able to slash weight to produce something that should be on every sports car fan's wish list."
Interior
Aside from the aforementioned carbon fibre seats, like the rest of the recently announced Lotus Sport models, the Exige 350 Roadster can be had with optional red or yellow Tartan trim within, although the less extrovert among you will probably prefer the leather or Alcantara upholstery instead.
Mechanicals
Although the 3.5-litre supercharged V6 is familiar enough, with 350hp and 400Nm propelling little more than a tonne, the Exige Sport 350 Roadster is scorchingly accelerative with a 0-100km/h time of 3.8 seconds; although its 240km/h top speed is somewhat distant from the 274km/h the coupé model is capable of. Drive goes to the rear wheels via a 'heavily revised' six-speed manual gearbox from the coupé, although Lotus will offer a six-speed automatic transmission with paddleshifts as an option.
Anything else?
As we've already mentioned, the Sport 350 Roadster was at GMS, where it sat alongside examples of three more cars we've already told you about - the Evora Sport 410, the Elise Cup 250 and the 3-Eleven track-focused machine. That, says Lotus, makes this the fastest line-up of cars the company has ever had.