Lotus Exige S Club Racer revealed

Lotus has yet again shaken up its parts bin to produce the latest in a long line of mid-engine sportscars with consummate track-day cred.

While the whole Club Racer formula is nothing to the Lotus brand, its application creates a desirable limited-edition coupe-only variant of the already ferocious Exige S, launched here in 2013.

Powertrain-wise, the Club Racer retains the same Toyota Aurion 3.5-litre V6 shared with boosted with an Aussie-designed Harrop supercharger, with outputs maintaining the regular S’s 258kW and 400Nm.

What’s new, however, is the 1161kg weighbridge ticket, skimming 15 kilos off the regular S through a gram reduction strategy to the doors, centre console, seat shells and battery.

The Club Racer also features the S model’s aggressive aero addenda that includes a specific front splitter, rear wing and flat underbody treatment the combines to contribute a claimed 42kg of downforce at 160km/h.

The Club Racer is claimed to sprint to 100km/h from and standstill in 4.0sec and has a v-max of 274km/h.

Standard fitment is a three-mode “traction slip threshold” controller for the electronic chassis smarts that a driver can tune to his or her liking.

While the Club Racer is hardly Lotus stepping outside its comfort zone, the new variant asks for a very modest premium over the regular Exige S in the UK market.

It remains to be see if the Club Racer will make the trip across the pond and how far beyond the Exige S manual’s $152,990 it’s likely to breach.

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