Lotus Exige S 240 - First Drive Review

Granted, we often get a bit technical here at Car and Driver, a nuance due in no small part to having an editor-in-chief who has an engineering degree from MIT and expects everyone to keep up with him during luncheon conversations, or at least nod enthusiastically. So the Mercedes, with well more than double the horsepower of the Lotus, is slower. How is this possible? The scales tell the story: The Mercedes weighs a portly 4910 pounds. The light-on-its-feet Lotus weighs a claimed 2100 pounds. The Mercedes has more than twice the horsepower but carries more than twice the weight. This, of course, points up an added benefit for the Lotus: an EPA-rated 23 mpg in the city compared with 11 mpg for the Mercedes. Light weight and utter simplicity have been the birthright of Lotus since the first one was built in 1948 by racing driver Colin Chapman. A very light car with a small engine could outrun a very heavy car with a large engine, Chapman reasoned, a thesis he proved on the racetrack over and over. Lotus became an enormous force in motorsports, entering Formula 1 in 1958 and winning the championship in 1963 and 1965 with Jim Clark, who died in 1968 while piloting, yes, a Lotus. That year, Graham Hill won the F1 championship for Lotus, and Jochen Rindt did the same in 1970, followed by Emerson Fittipaldi in 1972 and Mario Andretti in 1978. Future three-time champion Ayrton Senna won his first Formula 1 race with Lotus in 1985.