In 1990, a Lotus Esprit SE driven by Richard Gere made a memorable cameo in “Pretty Woman.” That car was powered by a small turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, yet with a weight of less than 3,000 pounds it was able to reach 60 miles an hour in less than five seconds. Since then, the industry trend has been toward vehicles that are bigger, heavier and more powerful. Not at Lotus, the British sports car maker: the 2008 Exige S 240 is smaller, lighter and less powerful than that 1990 Esprit. It’s also faster. In another couple of decades, you might expect the Lotus flagship to be an electron with a steering wheel. Even then, they’ll be trying to get it down to a quark. Building a car with an emphasis on austerity and light weight starts a happy chain reaction of performance-enhancing consequences. For instance, because the Exige is light — just 2,077 pounds, Lotus says — it can generate ferocious road grip with relatively skinny tires. Each of the 195-width front tires on the Exige is actually a bit narrower than the rear tire of a 2009 Yamaha Vmax motorcycle. As a result, the Exige gets by without power steering, trimming away a few more pounds. (Fearless assertion: the Exige has the most delicious steering feel of any current production car.) And you might even sweat off a few pounds wrestling that nonassisted steering at parking-lot speeds. Who needs Jenny Craig when you’ve got Colin Chapman? The Exige is more comfortable than it looks. The seats are wafer-thin and barely adjustable. (The driver’s seat moves fore and aft; the passenger seat is bolted to the floor.) But once you’ve limboed your way inside, it’s not a bad place to be. There is plenty of legroom and those severe-looking seats actually prove surprisingly accommodating. Need to adjust the passenger-side door mirror? It’s not motorized, but you can reach it from the driver’s seat. As for amenities, there’s air-conditioning, power windows, power locks and even a strikingly minimalist cup holder consisting of little more than a small ring of aluminum that suspends a leather strap. Lotus should trademark this design and call it the Coffee Thong. The S 240 is powered by a 1.8-liter Toyota 4-cylinder, supercharged to an output of 240 horsepower, that drives the rear wheels. The mid-mounted engine has a huge intercooler perched on top, so rearward visibility could charitably be described as compromised. You learn to back into parking-lot spaces, because reversing into traffic would be an invitation to catastrophe. Lotus says the Exige S 240 is the quickest car it has ever made ever, with a zero-to-60 time of 4.1 seconds. (The S 240’s “quickest Lotus” honors will probably cede next month to the Exige S 260, which has 17 more horsepower and, through generous use of carbon fiber, is 50 pounds lighter.) The supercharger, besides cranking up the horsepower, smoothes out the power delivery. With the naturally aspirated version of the little engine — originally developed with Yamaha for the Toyota Celica GT-S — output was tepid until the variable valve timing shifted into its high-r.p.m. mode, unleashing an abrupt surge of power. With the S 240, you don’t have to work that hard. There’s a still a manic rush to the rev limiter (which, for brief moments, can allow up to 8,500 r.p.m.), but the Exige also feels tractable around town. You can shoot the gaps in traffic without crossing your fingers and hoping the power will arrive in time. Which is important when you’re driving a car so small it has you looking up from the driver’s seat to see the tailpipe of a Camry. The Exige isn’t shy about proclaiming its racecar intentions. Its Yokohama Advan Neova tires have a treadwear rating of 60, the lowest (and hence stickiest) number I have ever seen on a street tire. (A Porsche GT3 comes in at 80.) On a skid pad, this thing grips so hard that you feel like an astronaut in a centrifuge. There are attachment points and cutouts in the seatbacks to simplify the installation of racing seatbelts. The $1,650 Track Pack provides suspension adjustments — ride height and damping rates — that let you tailor the car’s setup to a particular racetrack. An automated launch-control system can be set to deliver the quickest possible getaways on various road surfaces. The Exige is so good at convincing you it’s a racecar that you’ll pull into gas stations and scream, “Gimme new tires on the right side and set the wing for more downforce at the rear!” Speaking of gas stations, two fill-ups of the 10.6-gallon tank cost $18 and $19, respectively, even with the required premium fuel. The E.P.A. mileage rating is 20 m.p.g. in town and 26 on the highway, reasonable numbers for a vehicle with this level of performance. Say what you will about the economy, but premium gas for less than $2 a gallon makes it really cheap to run your Lotus. Which is nice, because the rather heady base price of $65,815 ($70,650 as tested) puts the Exige S 240 in the territory of a Corvette Z06 or a Nissan GT-R. Either of those cars is generally more agreeable on public roads. With the Lotus, you’ll occasionally find yourself driving with a shoeless right foot: the pedals are so close you’ll be mashing the brake when trying to accelerate. The quirks don’t end there. The headlights and instruments are always lighted, but at night you must remember to click the light switch to activate the taillights — an electrical idiosyncrasy (for a 2008 car, anyway) that I learned about thanks to a helpful local constable. And you’ll inadvertently honk the horn at inopportune moments because the buttons are right where your thumbs tend to land on the steering wheel spokes. In the era of ultra-refined, focus-grouped transport modules, the Exige still gives the impression that it was designed by an autocrat with a penchant for speed and a belief that ergonomics are an urban legend. From that, you might conclude that the Exige is a throwback, a relic of simpler days. On the contrary, I see it as a harbinger of the future. It’s simple, light and fun. Its mileage is good. It shows how much performance can be wrung from modest engines. If volatile oil prices and the faltering economy conspire to push sports cars toward a more spartan ideal, that might not be a bad thing. The Exige has its warts, but once you’ve felt the tingle of electricity coming through that little Momo steering wheel, once you’ve clicked off a perfect motorcycle-quick upshift just as the motor reaches its snarling peak, even the most jaded proponent of V-8-powered excess will admit that Lotus is onto something.

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The Lotus Exige S 240 is Fun