Lotus Exige Cup 430
Why 6.0: The most powerful Exige Lotus ever built, and the only way to buy one was with three pedals — no automatic was ever offered. 430 hp at 7,000 rpm in a 1,056 kg car generating 220 kg of downforce is a circuit weapon first, and the ownership base treats it that way: heavy track use, modest road mileage, and enough end-of-the-line scarcity to keep early flipping rare.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
A supercharged V6 inches behind an unlined cabin, with a straight-through titanium exhaust and audible blower and bypass-valve chatter. But the Toyota V6 underneath is workmanlike, so what you get is force and volume rather than any real melody.
6-cylinder · supercharged · 7,200 rpm redline · rated 7.9 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €120k (2018) → €116k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
There aren't any — strict two-seater.
No anchors, and on most of these no passenger airbag either — the car is too stripped for the question to arise. Whatever goes in that seat goes in on a harness or a belt.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
Lotus revealed the Cup 430 in November 2017 by taking the Evora GT430's supercharged 3.5-litre Toyota V6 and squeezing it into the smaller Exige shell, then finding another 19 kg over the Sport 380 through carbon-fibre body panels and a titanium exhaust. The result makes 430 hp at 7,000 rpm and 440 Nm at 4,000, runs to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, and generates 220 kg of downforce — figures that only mean what they mean because the car underneath weighs 1,056 kg dry. Refusing to offer an automatic filtered the buyer list down to people who intended to use it, and that shows in how these are owned: AP Racing brakes, three-way adjustable Nitron dampers and Michelin Cup 2 tyres are not specification for a car that lives under a cover. When the Cup 430 Final Edition closed the Exige nameplate out in 2021 it briefly attracted the last-of-the-line crowd, but Lotus buyers have never been reliable speculators, and values slid at an ordinary sports-car pace rather than spiking. What is left is a car bought by people who wanted the hardest Exige and who drive it where a 407 hp-per-tonne track special makes sense — which is a circuit, not a commute.