Holland may be best known for windmills, tulips and cannabis-serving coffee shops, but a little-known company is looking to change all that with a lightweight sports car that tips the scales with figures comparable to a Formula One racing machine.

From humble beginnings in 1978, Donkervoort has developed a cult following on the Continent, with exquisitely engineered yet wincingly expensive Lotus Seven clones. It’s still a family concern: Joop Donkervoort is the founder and designer, Denis, his son, drives the company’s racing car and Amber, his daughter, staffs the office — yet they’ve turned out more than 1,000 cars from a small factory in Lelystadt, northern Holland.

What started out as copies have morphed into cutting-edge sports cars in their own right. In the FIA GT4 European racing championship, prototypes of its latest model, the D8 GT, have mixed it with Aston Martins and Porsches. Thanks to the vehicle’s light weight and turbocharged engine, it briefly held the production-car lap record, the company claimed, at the world’s toughest racing circuit, the 13-mile Nürburgring in Germany.

Key to the D8 GT’s breathtaking speed is weight — or lack of it. The Donkervoort weighs just 650kg — slightly more than the minimum weight of an F1 car with its driver. Or to put that in context, a whopping 240kg less than the Cup 260, the most extreme version of the Lotus Exige.

The secret is carbon fibre. The chassis has been produced with the help of the Advanced Composites Group, based here in good old Blighty, whose customer list includes the McLaren Mercedes F1 team.

With the reduced weight of a carbon-fibre chassis comes better performance, handling, fuel economy and a whole bundle of other advantages. It’s an awkward material, though, and expensive. The starting price of the Donkervoort is €89,000 (£79,000).

Look at the unclothed body of the D8 GT and its clear, wafer-thin panels are simply folded around the components in the most aerodynamic form possible.

Slide into the figure-hugging driving seat, pull down the delicate scissor door (so light it shakes in the breeze) and fire up the guttural 1.8-litre turbocharged Audi engine and it feels raw and stripped-down. It’s an emotive driving machine, as pure as they come. The D8 GT screams through 62mph in 4sec and does so with such violence it feels twice that fast as the growling noise fills every corner of the claustrophobic cabin.

Every change on the five-speed manual gearbox is greeted with a sound akin to Darth Vader sneezing: “Ahshish”. Lift off the throttle and the whole car slows like you’ve stamped on the brake pedal; with so little mass to carry, there’s precious little momentum. But a set of monstrously effective Tarox brakes is there for when you need them.

The reaction to each and every one of your inputs — to the throttle, the steering and seemingly even the way you tilt your head — is instant. It’s an addictive experience, one that could put your licence in serious jeopardy, especially in Holland, home of the Gatso. While the top speed of 155mph isn’t enough to worry the Italian supercar giants, it is more than enough for the Dutch public highway, and as Denis Donkervoort has capably proven, most racetracks in the world. It is in corners especially that the D8 GT makes larger, more powerful sports cars look stupid.

There’s no power assistance on the steering, so at speed the slightest nudge on the wheel sends the car darting to the apex of a corner in a whirlwind of motion, speed and grace.

And it will drive however you want it to: with racing-line precision or (thanks to its limited-slip differential) drifting sideways through bends. Point to point, this may just be the fastest sports cars I have driven.

And it could have gone faster still had not the fully adjustable suspension — tuned via ingeniously simple twisting handgrips in the rear — been set for pliancy and traction in the violent storm that greeted our test. But beware: bereft of electronic driving safety aids, you need to switch your brain to full concentration mode.

Yet for all its thrills, the D8 GT is more than a track-day toy for wealthy boy racers. The closed roof, luggage bay and leather-clad interior are all part of the plan to bring race-car handling to the luxury market.

Of course, certain sacrifices have been made at the altar of weight saving, including door handles (replaced with a wire and press-stud fastening) and a sound system. Given its uncomfortably closed-in cabin, a bespoke air-conditioning unit —weighing 6kg — is an optional extra.

In a world where sports cars, as many of us know and love them, are living on borrowed time, Donkervoort’s D8 GT seems to have a sound future: it can return 28mpg and emits 186g/km of CO2. And while the opposition busy themselves with hybrid or hydrogen power to fuel their survival, Donkervoort will set to work on an even lighter sports car, built around a smaller Volkswagen Group engine, which will drink less than a thirsty gnat and emit fewer noxious fumes than a cow on Slim-Fast.

Who’d have thought it? From the land of the Gatso camera, a super-fast, clean’n’green sports car that makes you feel less guilty than a stroll around Amsterdam’s red-light district.

Hot Wheels specs

Engine 1781cc, four-cylinder turbo

Power 270bhp @ 6000rpm

Torque 260 lb ft @ 4000rpm

Transmission Five-speed manual

Fuel/CO2 28mpg / 186g/km

Road tax band F (£210 for a year)

Performance 0-62mph: 4sec

Top speed 155mph

Price €89,000 (£79,000)

Verdict Lightweight sports car of the future