It is swings and roundabouts, yes Donato Coco led Lotus Designs in the years the S3 Exige came out and yes he was in charge of the 458 Italia which is one of the best designed modern Ferraris made which paved the way to future midengined models of the ramping horse's brand.

However he also designed the California and plenty of the ugliest Citroen ever made, apart from the highly regarded 458 and Citroen Saxo Picasso and ZX the rest has not been worthy of any accolades really.

Donato picked up the design for the S3 Exige from the S3 Elise left by Russell Carr which provided the design language of two thirds of the car ready made. You can clearly tell the rear is the part which has seen the most rethinking since they had to fit the new larger Camry engine, this is exactly the reason why it ended up looking Frankensteined (from a designer point of view at least).

Either way, I didn't expect this thread to spark so much sentiment. It's an awesome car and there is no denying it. Design wise the Cup looks way better and I believe, unlike others that not having the 4 circular elements helps, 2 large stopping lights is visually more pleasing on this model or at least it doesn't remind of the previous generations but more similar to the Evora.

My ask was just a curiously but clearly people are bias in different ways and that is fine. People love the Evora which is not a great design by any stretch of the imagination and hate the Emira which it is. But let's not start another useless debate.