The new £105,900 Lotus Emira 420 Sport is the most powerful new Lotus Emira

This is the new Lotus Emira 420 Sport. Adding the moniker ‘Sport’ to a… sports car feels a tad unnecessary, but the 420 bit is important: it gets 420PS – that’s 416bhp – making it the most powerful Lotus Emira you can now buy.

That’s more than the entry level 2.0-litre turbocharged Emira... 'Turbo' (360bhp), and more than the 400bhp offered by both the 2.0-litre Turbo SE, or the 3.5-litre supercharged V6 of the … V6 SE.

Those sixteen additional AMG horsies help this sports car dubbed 420 Sport accelerate from 0-62mph quicker – 3.9s – and max out even higher, all the way up to 186mph. There’s an eight-speed dual clutcher on board, which means your only chance to get a manual Emira remains that V6.

Lotus has added lightness via an optional ‘Lightweight Handling Pack’ which, again, for a lightweight sports car designed to handle feels… yeah. In any case, this optional Handling Pack gets two-way adjustable Multimatic dampers, rides a whopping 5mm lower, features a new titanium exhaust, lithium-ion battery, carbon fibre components and something to record how fast (or slow) you are around a circuit.

Elsewhere, Lotus has refined the Emira 420 Sport sports car via new body components designed to better manipulate the air around it: new vents, a new front splitter, larger sills, a lip spoiler and a louvred tailgate. There are numbers attached to how much it improves the airflow. You might care, but you might care more that these additions “subtly reference” old stuff like the Esprit Turbo.

There’s more optional stuff, including the chance to add lots more carbon fibre to the exterior of the car, different wheels, new colours, and a removal tinted glass roof panel available for the first time.

“Adjustable dampers, increased downforce, sharper responses, reduced roll – every detail obsessively engineered to put the driver more in control,” said Gavan Kershaw, Lotus Cars’ handling expert.

You’ll pay for such control, mind – the 420 Sport starts from £105,900.