Having a 250 Cup a know for a fact it is going to be a fantastic car in pure isolation as a driving machine.
The problems is in IMHO is that 1) the car STARTS at 60k, once you spec it with the gold paint, titanium exhaust, air con etc is becomes a 70k car which is a lot of money for an Elise in anybody's book and 2) the new model is only a couple of years away.
Not sure what customer demographic Lotus are going for with this car. It's very expensive for a road car/track day car and not exotic enough for anybody who has the money for a pure trackday toy i.e BAC Mono, Radical etc.To most people the basic Sprint would do almost as well as the 260 Cup and certainly more in the bangs for bucks stakes. The fact that no one on this Forum has bought one, which is a Lotus fanboy site, speaks volumes. So it appears to be neither a car for Lotus fans looking for a step up and hardly the car to tempt people new to Lotus products. After all notwithstanding the competition there are lot more models in the Lotus line up that would appear to make more sense to those buyers.
Saying that I genuinely looked to px my original 250 Cup for one for the reason you mentioned, but the differential of 35K for a year old car did not make any logical sense.
Better off saving more pennies and get an Exige 430 Cup, which makes more sense (or a little more sense) or waiting only 2 years for the new model knowing Lotus is bound to make the car a big step up in terms of development.