Porsche 911 vs Lotus Exige
What's the difference?

Porsche 911

$299,990 - $548,888

2025 price

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Lotus Exige

—

2017 price

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Mercedes-Benz C-Class

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Toyota Tundra

Summary

2025 Porsche 911

2017 Lotus Exige

By Andrew Chesterton

By Stephen Corby

Safety Rating

Engine Type

Flat Twin Turbo 6, 3.6L

Supercharged V6, 3.5L

Fuel Type

Premium Unleaded/Electric

Premium Unleaded Petrol

Fuel Efficiency

11.0L/100km (combined)

10.1L/100km (combined)

Seating

Likes

Incredible acceleration and agility
Hybrid tech never intrusive nor obvious
Digitalised cabin experience a plus

Unassisted, unadulterated steering (at speed)
Beautiful balance and stiff chassis
Gearbox

Dislikes

Potent power and can feel less enthralling than ICE
Supercar-level pricing is getting out of control
Road noise slightly impacts daily drivability

Sheer impracticality
Heavy steering (at low speeds)
Getting in and out of it

2025 Porsche 911 Summary

The icon is electric. Well, kind of.

This is the new Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, which ushers in a facelift for the brand’s most famous model — and it’s one that introduces a pretty major change.

That faint whistling you hear is most likely the distant wails of the Porsche purists, because this new 911 is now a hybrid.

Yes, the Carrera GTS features Porsche’s clever T-Hybrid engine, which is the brand’s take on electrifying the world’s most famous sports car.

It’s faster than the model it replaces, but it also fundamentally alters the formula that has made the 911 the world’s most iconic sports car.

The question is, does it alter it for the better?

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2017 Lotus Exige Summary

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.

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Deep dive comparison

2025 Porsche 911 2017 Lotus Exige

Verdict

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The t-hybrid might be an entirely new propulsion system for the 911, but the net result is unchanged – power, poise and performance on tap.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

Verdict

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.

Porsche 911 vs Lotus Exige What's the difference?

Summary

Deep dive comparison

Verdict

Verdict

Porsche 911 vs Lotus Exige
What's the difference?