Lotus Exige vs Maserati MC20

What's the difference?

Driving naked is ill-advised, and possibly illegal, but taking a spin in the Lotus Exige 350 Sport is as close as you'd ever want to get. It's not so much that you feel you've left your clothes at home, but that the car has shed its accoutrements, and indeed its very flesh, leaving you with a kind of skeletal vehicle; just bare bones and muscle.

What this punishingly hard and fiercely focused machine does to your bones and flesh is best described as extreme chiropractry - in particular the stress of ingress and egress - but fortunately it makes up for the moans, bangs and bruises by fizzing your adrenal glands in a big way.

The question is whether the fun is worth the suffering, and the  $138,782.85 price tag.

With Ferrari leaving the Fiat-Chrysler family and becoming an independent entity in 2016, Maserati was left without a technology partner.

Suddenly, the Trident brand had to go it alone and come up with its own engines for the first time in more than 20 years. The MC20 sports-car is the result of that rebirth.

While there’s no doubt the Maserati brand has the currency to pull this off, the MC20 is also a big step outside the company’s usual grand-tourer box.

The new coupe is aimed at McLaren, Porsche and even Ferrari buyers, so can the first true Maserati sports car since the MC12 of 2004 walk the walk? And let’s not forget that the MC12 was Ferrari Enzo-based…

No-compromise cars are often the ones that impose the most compromises, and in that sense, the MC20’s shattering on-paper performance means its greatest attributes can’t be enjoyed on a public road.

That’s why this review was conducted entirely on Philip Island’s 4.4km Grand Prix layout. As a result, we can’t tell you much about parking ease or highway fuel consumption. But as for the things that give a super-sports car its identity, read on.