Yargk

I know people have looked at the Road and track ultimate track test because of the GT2 results, but did anyone notice that the Exige came in dead last? I love the exige, but jeeze, it's hard to justify purity if you're getting passed by cheaper 5 seaters.

171mph

thanks i just saw that article. i've never driven an exige but my dad has a '68 seven and i think you nailed it when you say 'purity'. don't think these cars have top performance by any means unless maybe you grab a 255 cup but the fun factor is where the purity comes into play, not necessarily lap times.

allegretto

Owned and drove a 255Cup last year. Did some things very well, but no brakes. Something about tracking a car with questionable brakes that takes out a lot of the fun...

Exige with a blower? The fastest ones are a click or two faster than a good Spec Miata. You make the call

mooty

dave, bring out the 7 to track.

a cup 255 is equipped with slicks. in that config, it's very much on par with 997GT3's at sears point and laguna.

allegretto, what pads did you run on 255? pagids will do wonders on that car. anything else will not work. i had some R4 and RS4 (forgot the popular brand name), POS.

edit: porterfield pads, POS

allegretto

Actually Mooty it comes with blacks. we though maybe that was why we were cooking the rotors. tried yellow and blue, still could fry a set in a day!!!

At $710 a piece (they were very proud of them) I felt this too much to "invest"

mooty

sorry to hear that. i am surprised. i have driven s240 and 255 and find the brake to be good, not porsche good, but good enough for 2k lbs car.

but who cares, go the the 7cup. i am rooting for you.

allegretto

You think? Even over a Radical?

Funny how you found the brakes "good". Mind you, they stopped, but warped rotor shudder just makes me...worried. I do this for fun. No one's gonna give me the iron or a check so I am very careful about safety.

The punch line was when I pitched a fit, they actually told me, "you trail-brake too much".

I was dumbfounded. So after the third set of rotors I turned it over to a PRO and said, "go drive this the way you would". He warped them in a dozen laps.

Another guy at the track had two 255's. At first he didn't have the problem. But as he drove harder he found what I did.

Now the follow up is that he's VERY WEALTHY and has been to Lotus and was highly regarded by them. He had 3 211's on order for his two track memberships. After he got a similar run-around he cancelled his order(s)

340 Elise, don't even think about it!

C.J. Ichiban

I saw this thread and immediately thought 340 was gonna come in guns blazing!

mooty

i didnt push the 240 and 255 too hard as they weren't my cars. although i had no prob with my exige 190hp and elise, those were much much slower cars.

radical is faster than cup and much much cheaper to run. but i am vane, and radical just doesn't do it for me.

blake

Yeah - where is 340Elise anyway? This is his topic!

-Blake

allegretto

Quite agree! The Elise was bulletproof, but slower, significantly.

C.J. Ichiban

yeah but just saying

"I've got a RADICAL" sounds pretty cool...I mean, it's called a radical, which is one of the coolest words in the english language.

Yargk

In my opinion the purity argument should have always gone a little something like this...

"Wait, you mean this car fits nothing in it, is uncomfortable as all hell, and is only a second quicker than my (insert heavy sports-luxury car here).

Yes, but it's more fun and I feel like I'm actually driving it."

With the increasing sophistication of electronic aids, the difference will shrink between a well setup pure sports car and a sedan of roughly equal power-to-weight ratio. My hypothesis is that it's hard to setup a car for both road and track, but with electronics this is easier (especially with AWD) so that the pure cars NEED to have more of a race setup to compete. This means that you're going to have decreasing returns with stripped out race versions of sports cars. You'll do a lot of work for not that faster a car. This is where the purity argument actually works though. Sure it's only a little faster, but it's a better experience in a car like an exige. However, with the Exige it's SLOWER which to me is untenable. It's the lightest car of the bunch which should give it an advantage yet it's the slowest. Colin Chapman's "simplify and add lightness" should make faster AND as a byproduct more fun cars, not just fun cars.

Pretend the RS was a little more fun to drive than the standard GT3, yet it was slower instead of a little faster. Would this make sense?

I love lotus and the idea of lotus. I also love the idea of stripping out cars and making them better street legal racers. But such a poor showing of Lotus's hottest street legal car is pretty pathetic.

Edit: The obvious answer is just power, the exige needs some. Power to weight is only a good indicator of acceleration at 0 mph since you need just pure power to overcome drag. So the Lotus 0-100 times are slower than most of the other cars on the field. However, it's not just power because the Mitsubishi evo MR, which has slower 0-100 times and weighs 1200 pounds more than an exige, is less than 0.3 seconds slower than the 240 around both willow springs and streets of willow. The MR is also much cheaper and holds 5 people.

TTRob

Aren't upgraded aftermarket brake packages available for the Lotus cars? I know you shouldn't have upgrade the brakes when buying a ''track ready'' model, but if the cars are enjoyable and otherwise reliable, wouldn't adding a relatively inexpensive brake upgrade package be the way to go?

RQ_GT3

Timely topic, I am in the market for a used Exige S to use as a backup car for my Radical... will need to research the rotor issue now.