Lotus 2-Eleven

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First time you take a corner at max-g in a Lotus 2-Eleven, it's going to hurt. The seat digs into your ribcage, your eyeballs will try to pop out the side of your head. Taking a set of S-curves is a series of slamming oscillations that leaves you short of breath and disoriented. The rush of wind buffets your crash helmet, the noise trembles your ears.

That's what makes a flyweight, sticky-tired roadster like this such a new and finally addictive experience. In a closed-cockpit road-based supercar, be it 911 or Corvette or Ferrari, you operate the controls from a relatively placid environment. And as those road cars weigh at least twice as much, so they simply can't take the kind of rapid direction-changes this Lotus thrives on.

It's based on the Elise aluminum chassis, with Toyota's 1.8-liter variable-lift four-banger, hopped up to 252 horsepower by virtue of Lotus's supercharger installation. There's no roof, windshield, doors, HVAC, headlamps or stereo. It's truly butt-naked, and weighs under 1500 pounds. Lotus claims it catapults from 0-60 in 3.8 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 12.2 seconds. This is an extreme machine.

In the UK you can buy headlamps and certify it for the road, but US cars are for the track only. They're not meant as racers for any particular series, but as recreational track cars, or for autocrossing and the like. Though it's clearly sensationally fast on a track, Lotus has been careful to make it accessible. Maintenance is simple and the mechanical components are robust. It's ultra-crash-safe.

Most of all, the handling is forgiving. You can feel the limits approach, and compared with a pure racer it transgresses them softly. You can learn with this car, polish your skills gradually. There's even an adjustable traction-control system. For a car that beats you to a pulp, that counts as very friendly behavior.