Unless you’re willing to perform Garlits-quality burnouts, do not enter into impromptu drag races that last only 100 feet or so, or your nephew’s jacked-up Z28 will put the Esprit SE on the trailer. It isn’t until the turbo spools up at 3000 rpm that the Lotus feels as if it had just been fired out of the sixteen-inch cannon atop the USS Iowa. Do these people expect us to waste fuel and burn rubber in a vulgar display of power? Okay, maybe just one more time.). At stoplights, you look straight ahead and ignore motorists gesticulating for your attention. (Forgive us you tend to feel smug in a car like this. That’s also quicker than a Lamborghini Countach or a Ferrari Testarossa, never mind such moon-calf machinery as the Ferrari 328GTS. Sixty miles per hour is yours in 4.8 seconds, a half-second improvement over the non-charge-cooled Esprit we tested earlier. Drop the clutch at 5300 rpm and prepare to have your nose assume the proportions of a ten-pence coin. All that from a sixteen-valve 2.2-liter four that, in its minuscule mid-engine cubbyhole, looks about the size of the power-steering pump on a Ford LTD. The outlay of extra cash gives you bragging rights to an engine producing 120 hp per liter-the highest specific-output piston engine available to American speed addicts. Of course, the SE package adds twelve grand to the sticker, which works out to $333 per bonus horsepower. What We Said: “The Lotus Esprit Turbo SE produces 264 hp at 6500 rpm-a 36-hp increase over the standard-issue 1990 Esprit Turbo. The most serious of car guys will find nothing to sneer at here.” The steering is crisp, the lane discipline good, and the ride well balanced. This time around, there’s actually some poetry in the chassis. There are other nice things to say about life with Grand National. hat’s important about this Regal is the kick you get from having such a deep well of power at your disposal the way the world gets yanked backward when the boost boils over the way the rear tires lay down long, beautiful streaks of black when you tromp the throttle. The GN even outsprints two of Ferrari’s blue bloods-the Testarossa (5.0 seconds) and the GTO (5.1 seconds). Is 4.9 seconds fast enough? It is if you want something quicker than a Lamborghini Countach (5.1 seconds), a Chevrolet Corvette (5.7 seconds), a Porsche 928S (5.7 seconds), a 944 Turbo (6.0 seconds), and the hottest Mustang or Camaro. What We Said: “The hulking black Grand National pictured here will scream from 0 to 60 mph faster than any other car made in America. That’s the only way to drive a Boxer without missing the best part: looking at it.” What one really needs to appreciate this car fully is a mirrored driveway. The Boxer demands a heavy hand to force it around the entrance ramps, hairpins, and cul-de-sacs of life at appropriately illegal speeds-but you sit back where there’s no hope of reaching the top of the steering wheel, so you can’t generate much leverage. Since your view of the world is cloistered by a low roof, a steep windshield, and flying buttresses out the back, you quite naturally assume there’s ambush traffic out to get you behind every blind corner. I would not say it’s a fantastically fun car to drive, however. The Boxer is quicker, faster, better at inhaling road through its long, low nose than anything else you’ve been able to buy here in recent history. So when cocktail conversation turns to quick cars, take your pick-quarter-mile, 0 to 100 mph, top speed, it matters not. What We Said: “It will deftly dispatch that other paradigm of performance, the Porsche 930 Turbo, into your mirrors with little more than a heavy Gucci on the right pedal at the right time. Somehow you feel oil more than anything else, all so smooth and slick the whole thing seems to be made of oil itself, oil just thick enough to lubricate everything and just thin enough to keep everything whirring freely.” Even nearing its 6800-rpm redline, it never feels as if any of those 48 valves in there were about to pop. prodigious engine is perhaps the sweetest in our experience. At 181 mph, the Testarossa is still in its element: a little busy and quite noisy, but squirming from cheek to cheek no more than a well-mannered nine-year-old on an uncushioned pew. The 4.9-liter all-aluminum design springs spiritually from the 3.0-liter boxer that brought Ferrari three Formula 1 World Championships. the engine bay behind your back, it houses the heart of hearts, a great twelve-cylinder. Not a hypothetical or theoretical 181 mph, not a beer-claim speed, but a real rocking, socking, reproducible, you-want-it-you-got-it 181 mph. What We Said: “There is fast, and there is faster than fast.