I have found a new way to have fun in a car and all you need is the £39,995 Lotus is asking for its new 2-Eleven and a long straight road.

What you do then is accelerate until you are travelling as fast as you dare and simply look in the mirror. There you will find a face you have not seen for at least a decade. It’s yours, but with its skin pulled so tight by the hurricane wind it’s pointed into that it’s stretched to look 10 years younger. Corners are funnier still as the altered angle of attack makes your cheeks ripple like you’re in a Nasa centrifuge.

I’m not sure this is quite what the 2-Eleven’s chief engineer Nick Adams had in mind when he told me to go and have fun with his new baby, but when you are protected from the elements by nothing more than the slightest suggestion of a windscreen it’s inevitable. And a proper screen is not the only item missing from the list of equipment you might expect on any normal road car. There are no windows either or, for that matters, doors. In their place there are a fire extinguisher, steel roll cage, and racing harnesses in place of seatbelts.

Then again, the 2-Eleven is anything but a normal road car. It is the most extreme Lotus ever to bear a numberplate and, given the competition for that accolade, that’s saying something. To give you some idea of how wild it is, there is a pure racing version of the 2-Eleven and the principal differences between it and the road car are a slightly bigger rear wing and the absence of any headlights. The engine, gearbox, brakes and suspension are identical.

The 2-Eleven exists because there is a hard core of Lotus fans who won’t stop wanting a yet more sporting Lotus until it builds one so quick it threatens to tear your head from your shoulders every time you accelerate, brake or corner.

And this one’s not far off: it has a modest 1.8 litre engine but not only is it supercharged to give 252bhp, the car itself weighs just 1,631lb. Put into perspective, it’s similar to giving a typical family hatch such as a Volkswagen Golf something like 500bhp.

The result is a car that will hit 60mph in 3.8sec, 100mph in 8.9sec and only stop at 150mph because of the aerodynamic interference of that vast rear wing. Sounds fast? Just occasionally, and with a very special sort of car, such statistics are poor indicators of real performance; this is one of those times.

What you really need to understand just what this car will do is a racetrack, the environment for which it was born. “The market for track day cars is growing exponentially,” claims Adams, “and while there are others out there catering for it very well, we believe there’s room for a car offering outstanding levels of all-round performance built to the same safety standards as a mainstream road car.”

Here he has a point: beneath its mad, downforce-optimised bodywork lies essentially the same immensely strong bonded aluminium structure as the Elise.

Happily Lotus still owns the same track on which it developed its most famous Formula One cars and here the 2-Eleven is little short of devastating. Scream up through the gears and you’ll think its massive acceleration must be its strongest suit: after half a dozen laps you’ll also know that it’s the weakest.

Part of the track is actually a runway and by the time you approach the corner at the end the 2-Eleven is doing around 135mph. The first time round I left my braking until what I thought was the last sensible moment and lost so much speed so rapidly I had to accelerate back up to the corner. Every lap, I left it later and later until the instinct of survival took over and forced me to mash the middle pedal to the floor, and still, had I the nerve, I could have left it later.

If there is a car with a stronger, more stable braking system, I’ve not driven it.

It’s the same on the corners. If you’re lucky enough sometimes to drive pure racing cars on slick tyres the idea of a car generating more G force going through a corner than under braking will not be that alien. But to anyone else it appears contrary to the laws of physics. But the 2-Eleven, a mere road car, will do it.

And with the kind of power it has you can of course slide the tail wide with a bootful of throttle, but instead of spinning you off into the scenery it’s easy to catch and control. Even if you do make a mistake, there’s not only antilock braking to save you but traction control with 18 settings: in position one it will shut the throttle even before you can detect the car is starting to slide; in position 18 you’re on your own.

The 2-Eleven is not without its issues. I drove two: a racing version that felt crisp, tight and indestructible, and a road version that had done rather more miles and had clearly felt every one of them. Its gearshift was loose and the bodywork creaky, but as it was the prototype, I guess some allowances should be made.

Less easy to avoid are the stark facts that you need to be something of an athlete to get in and out of the car, the wind buffeting on the road makes even short journeys hard work and if you don’t want your face lacerated by stones flying up from the car in front you’ll have to wear a helmet. What’s more, if it rains you get wet.

Nevertheless, I hope with all my heart that the 2-Eleven succeeds, for it is not only howling good fun to drive, it is also the kind of car that should be wearing the Lotus badge.

The bad news is that Lotus has only one set of tools with which to make it, which limits production to a maximum of 100 cars per year. If you’re interested I’d put down this paper and pick up the phone.