Vauxhall Lotus Carlton / Opel Lotus Omega

The long version

GM handed Lotus a mundane mid-size saloon and a mandate to make it embarrassingly fast, and Lotus responded by boring the Omega's straight-six out to 3.6 liters, bolting on two turbochargers, and fitting brakes and a chassis capable of handling all 377 horsepower — enough for 177mph and a 0-100mph time that reportedly beat contemporary Ferraris, in a car that still looked like fleet-spec transport apart from subtle flares and a distinctive shade of dark green. British tabloids ran campaigns arguing it should be banned from public roads entirely, on the theory that no car this fast should wear a Vauxhall badge and be sold to ordinary buyers; Lotus and Vauxhall built 950 anyway, split between UK Carltons and European Omegas, into a recession that made a car pricier than a contemporary BMW M5 a hard sell regardless of the badge on the boot. Unlike the mid-engine Italian and French exotics in this batch, nobody buys a Lotus Carlton to look at — the entire appeal is the sleeper act, a car that reveals nothing until the driver plants the throttle, and that keeps the ownership pattern skewed toward people who actually want to use the performance rather than photograph it. It never came to the US, so American interest is purely aspirational grey-market territory, but UK and European owners still drive theirs with a regularity the seven-figure Group B cars in this batch never see.