Pampered, Extremely Rare (1 Of 62), Unmolested Esprit on 2040-cars

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Lotus offers Exige S Roadster for sale, but not in North America

The first thing you need to know is that this is the Lotus Exige S Roadster, unchanged from the Exige S even in price and officially the fastest convertible Lotus has ever made. The second thing you need to know is that if you live in the US, you won't be getting this car.
Now that that's out of the way, the lack of a roof, rear wing and front splitter help make it 22 pounds lighter than the coupe, coming in a 2,565 pounds, and the supercharged 3.5-liter V6 in this topless blossom discharges 345 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque. For historical comparison with a non-convertible, those numbers nearly match the 2004 Lotus Esprit V8 Final Run edition - which had twin Garrett turbochargers. Yet the Exige S gets from a stoplight to 60 miles per hour in 3.8 seconds, nearly a full second quicker than that Esprit. Fair play, though, the Esprit did weigh 3,040 pounds.
It will be fitted with a six-speed manual only, and cost 52,900 pounds ($79,667 US), 55,378 euros ($71,404 US) or 8,500,000 yen ($82,078 US), depending on where you live. Here in the US we'll be sticking with the track-only Exige V6 Cup and Cup R models. The press release below offers more on the fine points.

NHTSA investigating Lotus Elise for oil leaks

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received 17 complaints about an errant oil line in the Lotus Elise, and thus, has opened an investigation. The issue concerns the line on the front right cooler, which, having got loose, sprays oil either on the wheel or inside the engine bay.
This investigation pertains to around 4,400 of the little track-day wonders sold in the 2005 and 2006 model years. There have been no injuries, but one car did leave the road and catch on fire. A NHTSA investigation doesn't mean a full recall has been issued, just that your friends in the fed are looking into the matter.

Race Recap: 2014 Spanish Grand Prix is boom and bust [spoilers]

The Spanish Grand Prix's 2.892-mile Circuit de Catalunya is considered a preview for the rest of the season, since it's a combination of long front straight and twisting middle sectors mimic sections from every other Formula One track to follow. After the long break following the flyaway races to open the season, teams and fans have also been looking forward to this race to see if anyone had a realistic hope of catching Mercedes AMG Petronas; Infiniti Red Bull Racing honcho Christian Horner boiled his team's outlook for the season down to the line, "We've got to [beat them in Spain] if we're going to make a championship of it."
If we take that as our starting point then the weekend began as a bust. Lewis Hamilton only just beat Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg for pole, the Brit's final effort getting him 0.178 seconds clear of the German. Daniel Ricciardo, proving Red Bull is at least the best of the rest, took third but did so more than a second behind Hamilton. Valtteri Bottas of Williams lined up fourth, almost 1.5 second behind and Romain Grosjean delivered overdue good news for Lotus by taking fifth on the grid, more than 1.7 seconds behind pole. Kimi Räikkönen in sixth outqualified his Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso in seventh, but he couldn't be happy about it because the Ferraris were nearly two seconds behind, and Jenson Button in eighth in the McLaren was more than two second behind. Felipe Massa put the second Williams in ninth, and Sebastian Vettel overcame a terrible start to the weekend to make it into Q3, then didn't set a time when his gearbox failed, then got dropped five places to 15th on the grid when the gearbox had to be changed.
When the lights went out, then came the boom...