The Lotus Elise is 20 this year. Happy birthday! Its reward for surviving two decades? Yet another special edition. Over the course of the Series 1 and Series 2 there have been 36 separate versions of this likeable British sports car, but this one – the new Cup 250 – is the fastest to date. 

It uses the same supercharged 1.8-litre Toyota motor found in the 220 Cup, but with a significant improvement in power and torque delivery thanks to a smaller pulley on the blower and revised engine mapping, done in-house at Lotus’s Hethel factory. There’s more area under both the power and torque curves on the dyno graph, which translates to extra flexibility out on the road.