This Lotus Evora GT430 Sport is the fastest ever Lotus

This week's 'fastest ever' Lotus story comes courtesy of this, the new Evora GT430 Sport. Yep, the already quite extreme Evora GT430 - revealed a couple of months back - wasn't exactly slow, but Lotus decided to make it even faster. So much so, it's now the fastest ever road-going Lotus with a 196mph top speed. That's a whopping 4mph more than the Evora GT430. Eat that.

The GT430 Sport removes much of the aero elements present on its sibling. So no mad wing, no carbon fibre front splitter, no louvres to reduce wheel arch pressure and so forth. Shorn of these elements, the Sport weighs in 10kg lighter than the GT430, at 1,248kg.

Lotus has deployed full carbon fibre mode too: carbon front and rear bumpers, front access panel, roof panel and rear quarters are present, along with a one-piece louvred tailgate with an integrated spoiler. It all adds up to a slightly better better power-to-weight ratio, at 345bhp per tonne.

There's still the same 3.5-litre, 24 valve water-cooled V6 on board, that still produces 430bhp. Enough to sling the GT430 Sport from 0-60mph in 3.7s with the manual gearbox option, or 3.6s with the auto 'box.

Though without all that GT430's mad aero, the GT430 Sport gets less downforce at speed, as you'd expect: at 196mph, the Sport produces 100kg of down force compared to the aero-kitted GT430's 250kg at 190mph.

As a result, it's predictably slower around the Hethel test circuit than the GT430 - a second slower, at 1m 26.8s in manual gearbox trim - but also costs less than that aero-hungry car too. Where the GT430 costs £112,500, the new GT430 Sport clocks in at £104,500.

Question is, which one do you go for? Lap times and stickiness, or top speed bragging rights?

Words: Callum Alexander