Right about now is where you'ld normally start reading a diatribe about the K-Series Rover motor. For years, other car makers claimed they took no steps of compromise away from their soul, but they all did, and still do. Lotus made fewer than most. Almost none, in fact, except a motor that made you wonder why the old Exige needed all the lairy bodywork to tote that engine.
Very clearly, that is no longer a relevant discourse. This car has been transformed by a Toyota heart transplant, and it's finally given the crescendo-chasing. Yamaha-headed four-pot a place to shine. While it's hampered by both weight and gearing in its original home (see breakout), this is the car the engine feels like it was designed for, and this is the engine the car feels like it was always meant to have. It feels like they've upped the point at which the variable valve-timed second camlobes start poking further down, but that's only because the bloody thing arrives at 6200rpm so quickly.
Keep the motor meandering below that and, honestly, it just feels like a stronger K-series. At idle, it never actually feels smoother than ye olde engine. That's the funny thing. Think Toyota engine; think sewing machine and Swiss-type precision. You don't actually anticipate a thing always whirring or the audible connection of metal on metal. Lots of tick-tick-ticking, the ssshhhhing of fluids and, even at idle, the steady hiss of air making its way onto the death row of the throttle body.
It's also a lot more grunty in the mid-range than it is in the Toyotas, and that has a lot to do with the Exige's hefltess 887kg kerb weight (and this is the fatter jobbie, with a fully carpeted passenger footrest, power windows, Alcantara trim and, for God's sake, sun visors!). It doesn't sound particularly refined or aurally-ecstaticm but when you open up the second cam, bloody hell, it gets stroppy. And that's exactly how it sounds. Angry. Mean. Urgent. Frantic.
And that means fast. Once its on the big cam, the Exige is a jet, absolutely no question, and it knows how to use its new-found rocket-status. Where the Toyotas bog at each gearchange, waiting for the thing to hit the cam-change point again, the Lotus whips the needle back into skirmish country in a blink, and it doesn't matter what gear you're in. Slam into the 8250rpm limiter, change, slam into it again.
