Key considerations
- Available from £40k
- 1.8-litre petrol four, rear-wheel drive
- S1 was more racey than later Exiges
- It loves being thrashed…
- …but it also demands vigilance and care on maintenance
- Buy now before the Americans do
This weekend we’re looking at the Series 1 Lotus Exige, the first of the coupe Elises, launched at Brands Hatch in April 2000 at the first round of the Lotus Motorsport Elise race series.
Considering that it would go on to become a landmark vehicle with two more series carrying it through a 20-year lifespan, the first Exige’s mayfly production run of just one year looks peculiar now. It was partly an engine timing thing. Not the kind of engine timing that’s controlled by cams and a belt but the kind that was determined by the engine builders/suppliers on whom firms like Lotus depended. The Toyota/Yamaha 2ZZ-GE 1.8 engines that would power '04-on Exiges weren’t available for that first '00 car. Instead, it was powered by a VHPD (Very High Performance Derivative) version of MGF’s Rover K series 1.8, putting out 177hp with the option of a £900 factory decat kit that took it up to 190hp, heady stuff compared to the humble 118hp of the first 1996 soft-top Elise.
The Exige looked the bizzo thanks to its more extreme flared-out Kamm-tailed body, and even today it still has a strong visual impact. The shape has aged brilliantly. The Exige was only 10kg heavier than the Elise so there was no penalty in driver appeal from having a roof. Some would say that the first S1 Exige was the best-looking one. Others would say that it was more focused than later iterations.
What can’t be argued about is the S1’s rarity. Of the total number of nearly 10,500 Exiges built from 2000 to 2021, when the Exige line was replaced by the Emira, just over 600 were S1s. Of those 600, fewer than 250 were licensed in the UK as of 2001. Today, in 2024, the number of unadulterated examples left running around on UK roads – ie not damaged/repaired, SORN’d/off the road, engine-replaced or track-only – is down to under a hundred. This rarity is cranking up Series 1 prices.
If you plan on driving an S1 Exige rather than parking it up in a climate-controlled environment, don’t go steaming in to buy the first S1 you see. You might not get on with it. In fact, you might not get in it. Rumour has it that one of the Lotus development team was 6ft 7in tall and they made sure he could get in, but shorter folk have tried and failed since then. The fixed roof on the Exige does limit the aperture. On S2 Exiges it was possible to unbolt the roof panel and stick on a soft-top from the Elise but the S1 Exige didn’t give you that option. Your chances of getting in it will depend on your flexibility and your ratio of trunk length to leg length. Smaller steering wheels will give you a bit more space to play with.
Once you’re in the sparse cabin is light and airy enough, but you’d never call the drive relaxing or sophisticated. In the wrong conditions, the S1 Exige has the potential to boil, deafen or batter you, or all three at once. In a practicality contest against something like an Audi TT the Lotus wouldn’t even make it to the start line, but it would dust the German’s car’s backside – or that of just about any other car – on any cross-country dash.
SPECIFICATION | LOTUS EXIGE SERIES 1 (2000-01)
Engine: 1,796cc petrol four 16v
Transmission: 5-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 177hp@7,800rpm
Torque (lb ft): 127@4,250rpm
0-60mph (secs): 4.7
Top speed (mph): 136
Weight (kg): 785
MPG (official combined): TBC
CO2 (g/km): 183
Wheels (in): 17
Tyres: 225/45
On sale: 2000-01
Price new: £30,020
Price now: from £35,000
Note for reference: car weight and power data is hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
If you wanted to go fast in a Series 1 Exige you had to work for it. The K series was a proper revbox, not delivering its peak power of 177hp until 7,800rpm and eking out just 127lb ft of torque at 6,750rpm. Even the 190hp versions had very little going on below 3,000rpm. That’s what life was like before the turbo became ubiquitous but there’s a lot of satisfaction to be gleaned from keeping the motor on the boil.
Not literally on the boil, hopefully. Unless you’ve just arrived on this planet from a different part of the Solar System you will always associate the K series engine with head gasket failure, but the ones that have made it this far in S1 Exiges will almost certainly have had all the fixes applied and will be as reliable as any other 23-year-old unit, arguably more so given the enthusiast following these vehicles have and the kind of maintenance you’d expect them to receive. Even if HGF does befall your Exige (check for emulsion in the coolant and a light-coloured exhaust pipe), or even if the cylinder liners wear away, which can also happen, putting this sort of thing right is cheap relative to the value of the car. There are plenty of Rover and MG-badged donor vehicles around to whom that equation doesn’t apply, so engine availability is unlikely to be an issue going forward.
In the right state of fettle, this is a brilliantly sporty little engine, very willing, very light and easily capable of getting past the 100,000 mile mark without major attention. Some have hit 200k. It didn’t hold a lot of coolant, and air could get into the cooling system too so it was always important to keep an eye on the level and to be gentle with the car until working temperature had been reached. Baffled sumps and frequent oil changes were highly advisable if lots of track work was on the cards.
The radiator’s plastic end-caps were known to fail but modern replacements are better quality and cost about a fiver from websites like elise.shop.com who do a massive range of Exige/Elise parts. Aluminium radiators were a step in the right direction but fitting one is not cheap as the front clamshell needs to be removed. Coolant expansion tank caps went too. Stainless steel exhaust systems were a popular upgrade after the original systems had rotted through.
Clutch slave cylinders wore out, as did fuel pumps. If the engine was running on three rather than four cylinders, a new coil pack would often put things right. If it was running rich there was probably an issue with the Lambda sensor.
Normal servicing initially ran at 9,000 mile/1 year intervals. Lotus offers a fixed-price servicing regime for the K-series Elise at costs for years 1-5 of £320, £460, £490, £900 and £320 respectively, all prices including VAT, but they don’t include the Exige S1 in that because this model is supposed to be serviced every 6,000 miles or six months. Cambelts on more powerful 160-on K-series engines like the Exige’s were originally meant to be replaced at the five-year service but that was brought down to four years/36k (on the old mileage basis) to bring it in line with Rover servicing recommendations relating to possible degradation from oil or coolant on top of the normal age parameters.
If for reasons rational or otherwise you simply cannot bear the idea of a Rover engine, Audi or Honda units can be used instead. These can be tuned to 500hp (Audi) or 600hp+ (supercharged Honda), turning the Exige into a hell of a tool.
On the transmission side, the clutch could become stiff and the gearbox was never ultra-slick, but unless the linkages were worn you rarely had trouble getting a gear. The differential was plenty strong but again the nature of the car is such that there’ll be no shortage of energetic starts in any Exige’s memory banks. Whining from the back end tells you it’s had a hard life. Synchros wore out for the same reason.
CHASSIS
The secret of the S1 Exige’s handling excellence lay in its sub-800kg lightness, and that was a function of its bonded extruded aluminium chassis, a great concept as long as it wasn’t damaged or simply worn out from too much track activity.
The inherent strength of the tub chassis was a double-edged sword as it made it hard for repair shops to bring a bent one back to factory standard. Binning a bent one wasn’t really an option either as new ones were over £10k and you’d be looking at 120 hours of labour to fit the rest of the car to it. Luckily most of the chassis presents itself for easy examination so you can carry out decent regular examinations simply by lifting the floor coverings. The floorpan needs to be flat with no surface ripples, and vendors need to be able to explain any spotty repainting marks under the sills.
The rear subframe and rear suspension uprights on the Exige S1 were made of steel rather than aluminium (the S2 had steel uprights at both ends). Steel doesn’t get on well with aluminium if moisture and crud are allowed to accumulate in the joining areas, and the electrolytic corrosion that killed suspension mountings on Exiges couldn’t be quickly sorted with a DIY welding kit.
In combination with gazelle-response steering the Exige’s double-wishbone suspension setup with coil springs and dampers and a front anti-roll bar worked brilliantly when the car was new and fresh, but as with any sports car a gradual deterioriation in the condition of components like the front end ball joints, rear toe links and shock absorbers at either end resulted in a loss of handling sharpness. Assorted clonks told you that parts needed to be replaced. Steering racks wore out too, an expensive thing to put right (getting on for £1,000 now).
Early Elises had the much respected MMC (Metal Matrix Composite) brakes made from a mix of aluminium and silicon carbide but the S1 Exige didn’t get those. Genuine refurbed 12-spoke Exige wheels sometimes come up for sale online. You’ll not get much change out of £2,500 for a set of four.
Exiges, like Elises, are very light so you’d think that consumables like brakes and tyres would last for a long time but in fact tyres wear out surprisingly quickly, the rears being the first to go at 8-10,000 miles, probably because these cars are driven more quickly than the average. You need to check the inside edges in particular because the tracking was easily knocked out, accelerating edge wear.
BODYWORK
Exige bodies were made of fibreglass so you’d be wrong to expect anything like close or consistent panel gaps. ‘Glass doesn’t provide much protection in an accident. On an Exige that was the chassis’s job, and it was very good at that, but given the nature of the car and its potential to lure the unwary into going maybe a little too quickly (especially on wet roads) you should be on maximum alert for odd bodywork cracks on cars you’re looking at buying because they could be pointers to possible trouble beneath. Genuine front crashboxes cost over £2,000 new from Lotus but used ones come up online for a little more than half that. A secondhand S1 Exige rear subframe with the longerons and boot floor included will cost you around £1,200 plus the cost of collection, or around £750 without those add-ons.
Front-end stone chipping was absolutely par for the course so paint protection film was a highly sensible precaution. If you intend to do a fair bit of trackdaying in your Exige you might want to consider investing in aftermarket fibreglass clam kits, either to keep your original ones safe or to replace them after it’s too late. Pattern rear clams go for around £900 in the UK, and front ones are about £1,000, both prices including dispatch. Original used front bonnets are £250-£300 depending on condition but the rear lid is harder to find and more expensive as a result. Used doors with the window glass included are around £500 a pop.
If the indicators stop working for some unknown reason you may find that switching the hazard, side lights and headlights on and off a few times will reinstate the indicators, for an equally unknown reason.
INTERIOR
Heaters can play up on cars that aren’t kept under cover when the fan motor is exposed to water. The central locking system wasn’t foolproof either and it’s a long job dismantling the dash to fit a new module (the dealer procedure), but if your mitts are not the size of ham hocks you could just about do it at home by shoving your hand through the window vent hole after removing the light switch panel.
Air conditioning, Alcantara seats and 340R seatbelts began life on the S1 Exige options list but air con became standard fitment from October 2000. Some would say that AC is essential on an Exige as it can get very hot in the cabin. Unfortunately, the Lotus system often conked out, either through condenser failure or rotting in the pipes that ran through the sills, and that wasn’t an easy thing to rectify. Keep-fit winders for the windows would stiffen up over time because of old warped runners, and again mending them was difficult because of the bonded door construction. The switchgear was from Peugeot and is pretty reliable.
PH VERDICT
The Exige name came from the French word ‘exiger’, which means ‘to demand’. It was a good choice. You didn’t buy an Exige for an easy life. You bought one to bring out the best in both the car and yourself. The S1 was more track-focused than the later iterations whose appeal was understandably broadened to gather in more customers. As such, the harder you drove an S1 the more you enjoyed it. You’d never get tired of looking at it either, ideally in the garage rather than sitting out on the drive slowly degrading.
It might seem from this piece that Exiges will keep owners constantly on their toes looking for the many ways in which things can go wrong, not just the normal mechanical stuff that affects any car but also in the main chassis, which is not something you’d be worrying about on ‘normal’ cars. Thing is though, if you can be bothered to make the effort then the Exige will reward you handsomely by delivering an amazing experience. Series 1 Exiges might look expensive to some, but when you acknowledge the mark that the Exige made on motoring history and remember how few of them were built – 600 in the course of a year or so, compared to 8,600 S1 Elises fired out between 1996 and 2001 – you might reassess that view.
Plus they’re hard to find. There are only two for sale in the PH classifieds at the time of writing: happily, one is outstanding (pictured) in the sense that it has previously spent 20 years in storage, and has only covered 8,000 miles in its lifetime. Of course, that sort of originality comes at a price: in this case, £75k. That will obviously not be the amount asked for something more heavily used, although ever-increasing rarity has certainly helped with values - we spotted Chassis #0001 a few years back, when £45k was being asked The other S1 currently for sale, with a supercharged K20 unit installed, is up for £38k. Let’s not forget either that the 25-year import regs have made this car available to American buyers in 2024, which is also likely to impact a car whose classic status is already assured.
Interested to find out more? Hangar111 specialises in upgrading, restoring and servicing Exiges, while Lakeside Engineering and Barry Ely have both been immersed in matters Lotus for a long time.
(All pictures courtesy of Outlander Vehicles)
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