Yes, it's the fastest road-going Lotus Elise ever built

It’s a tried and tested recipe for Lotus, and the new Elise 250 Cup doesn’t mess with the flavours: less weight, more power.

It’s down a dress-size, shedding 21kg to 931kg all-up, and gains 26bhp from it’s Toyota-sourced, supercharged 1.8-litre four. That gives a total of 243bhp and 261bhp/tonne, enough for 0-60mph in 3.9 seconds and the title of fastest purely road-going Elise ever. Note that time is to 60mph mind, rather than the 0-62mph we more commonly see these days - so expect that sprint to take 4.3. Still, it’s a quick thing.

Available as a roadster with a hard-top option, there’s also a Carbon Aero Pack which drops a further 10kg, a whopping rear wing and chunky front splitter - Lotus reckons 66kg of downforce at 100mph and 155kg at the 250 Cup’s top speed of 154mph.

And this is, as ever, a driver’s car: 6-spd manual ‘box, standard electronic diff, AP Racing brakes, ‘track tuned’ ABS, ultralight forged alloys (16s in the front and 17s out back) wrapped in sticky Yokohama Advan A048s. The company describes it as having ‘extremely focused handling’, which probably mean it’ll be extremely fun for track days and high days and a bit of a trial everywhere else. One for the hardcore.