I popped over to B&C and met Antonia who let me loose in the white V6 S Exige they have.
For reference I had a 111R for 7 years and an Evora S for 2 but that was quite a few years ago and I wanted to see if the Exige grabbed me before I started looking too hard.
Good points
Looks
Engine/Performance
Badge
Bad points
The gear linkage is really bad, it's like a stick in a bucket. I knew they weren't great but this one was very loose although most gearchanges were smooth.
It felt a lot heavier than my Elise, a lot. On bumpy backroads it needed a lot of speed to iron out the bumps and as I was just one a test drive at normal speeds it really got bounced about, although probably the same as any similarly sprung car I guess.
Steering was heav-isy, no doubt not helped by tyres wider than an Elise, but it was ok.
It felt its age a bit, but that was only to be expected.
I came away a bit unsure of it tbh and may try the Elise CUP 250 to see how that feels, or even an Emira.
I shouldn't have expected it I guess but my old Elise was light, agile and fast. The Exige just felt fast and heavy to me.