Aston Martin Vanquish vs Lotus Exige

What's the difference?

The definition of luxury is having something you want, rather than something you need. And the Vanquish is definitely something you don’t need, but will desperately want once you’ve experienced it. It’s opulence on wheels, the kind of car you buy mostly because you can. Because owning a V8-powered Aston Martin wouldn’t cut it in your circle of friends. Or because you just want the very best things in life, cost be damned.

To say the Lotus Exige 350 Sport exists at the very pointy end of motoring is a sharp understatement. It is, in essence, a track car that you’re somehow allowed to drive on the road, which means it's hugely compromised in various ways as a vehicle for day-to-day use, yet it's not really fair to criticise it for those failings, because commuting was never its intended purpose.

While it would obviously shine in its natural environment of a race circuit, the fact is you could also enjoy it enormously between track days if you pointed it at a suitably smooth and winding bit of country blacktop.

The performance, handling, steering and stopping are all fantastic, in the right conditions, and you can see how someone might justify it to themselves as a far cheaper version of a ($327,100) Porsche 911 GT3. The difference being that a Porsche doesn't make you fold yourself up like a pocket knife every time you get in.

The Lotus, then, is a car for the extreme enthusiast, only. And possibly for nudists, too.