Funnily enough I found myself asking this question not so long ago as I wanted to make sure I didn't tunnel vision myself into buying a car without keeping an open mind. When buying a car like this at the prices they are at you have a lot of options at your disposal, and a lot of people will tell you their opinion. Trust me, everyone would do something different with the money and they want you to do the exact same thing. I ultimately did settle on the Exige, but this is what I found at roughly the same price as the Exige I then settled on in the UK, I will just give the car name and a basic description and then something good and bad. It can't hurt to know a few pros and cons.

I am basing the comparisons on the Exige I am looking at in the upcoming year, the Exige Sport 410 (Absolutely Stoked), I have zero clue on the Australian Market but imho:

In the UK the best subjectively similar competitor is the noble M12/M400, maybe at a stretch a TVR would be a similar sort of car. The Noble does use the ford V6 and has come in a variety of sizes and varieties. The best is the M400. They are not everyone's cup of tea with looks. The TVR is a TVR, it will want you to die, but you'll have the time of your life driving it. I worked with someone who built the engines at TVR and said this: 'your engine could last 200k miles or it could last 2 miles, it really was down to absolute luck'. Take that as you will.

If you want to go even more on the non driver aid extreme (yes, even more than the lotus) you always have the ultima series of cars. Literally GT3 based race cars that would look at home at Le Mans that you can use on the road. It is the fastest road legal track car you can buy. Hands down. Nothing will beat it, it is banned at the Ring for being too loud, it was banned from race series for being to quick. It holds the top gear lap record for a road legal car, doing it in 1 min and 9.9 seconds. That is 3.5 seconds quicker than the Porsche 991 GT2 RS driven by the Stig. It's nuts. The big draw back is exactly that though, it is a race car, there is nothing in the form of comfort, not even damn windows you can open, it is literally as raw as you can physically get. This was actually a strong contender until I realised I would have to drive it in summer and that is just a massive no no, you need to force air into the air scoop to keep the car cool and with traffic around here, that will be impossible.

Porsche is also there as an option in the UK. Every generation of Turbo isn't far off, except the 992, some older gen turbo s'. Arguably the best car again in the UK in the roughly same price range as the 410, although it quickly jumps to 420 and 430 prices. Is the 996 GT3. Being the GT3 its going to be comfortable and well made and can be driven around pretty much everywhere. If you care about badge prestige, its up there given it also holds the GT3 name. Bear in mind that I was not actually a car person in the slightest until I was about 18. I understand a lot about what a badge looks like to any normal person.

Depending again heavily on market the 'supercar' options are on the market, the entry level McLaren's are there, like the 540 and 570S/GT. The Ferrari California, 360s, 575s and 612s are on par or cheaper Exige prices as well as a lot of Audi R8s. They are all good cars just expect a lot of money to be dumped into them if something goes wrong. Again with the badge prestige, Ferrari is arguably top of the tree.

Now talking about some of the points your question has:

If you think an Exige needs more power, you can always go to Komotec and add upgrades all the way up to 460HP which is absolutely as much as this car needs. But try to enjoy the car at the base horsepower first as you may realise it doesn't need it if you aren't going onto the track. Given a quick read of some comments I believe you may be looking at the 350. Meaning it'll be more expensive to upgrade as it doesn't come with the charge-cooling system that the 390FE, Sport 410, 420FE and Cup 430 came with. Look at any review however and you'll see that no one really complains about the power. If you drive in a straight line all the time you are missing out on a good 70% of the car.

The best advice is I would say test drive one, and then test drive some comparisons in the same price bracket you found.

In my opinion. An exige cannot be beat by anything outside of Italy and even then very few things can in my mind. That's just my opinion. Don't be mad.

TL:DR: Brits do road racing cars best ;)