The New Lotus Exige Makes Its First Appearance: Spy Shots

We have heard about a new Lotus Exige for quite some time now, but this time the real car has finally taken its first steps as a prototype and we have the very first photos of it. Its true this is one of the ugliest camouflage we have ever seen, but if Lotus tried to keep our spy photographers away, they were wrong.

You might ask how can we be sure that this the Exige. Well, is not so hard to tell because the test car does not bear any resemblance to the recent Lotus concept models shown in Paris last year so given the prototype’s shape and size, the most plausible explanation is a replacement for the Exige.

From these pictures we can see that the new Exige will get a nose looking a lot like the one from the Evora and that the rear also is completely different and makes the car look much longer. The roofline is also different from the one in the current model.

Is still a long time until we’ll see it on the roads or in show rooms, but we believe that this new version is powered by the same V6 engine as also found in the bigger Evora. That would mean a 3.5 liter V6 producing 280 horsepower in the normal version and 350 horsepower in the S version.

Also the mules we seen before where all wider so we suspect that the new Exige is slightly wider than the current one. Beside this, the prototype also gets bigger brakes, another indication the model will deliver better performance numbers.

Specs: the new model will make its world debut in 2012 at the Geneva Motor Show probably as a 2013 model

Images:CarPix