Grand Prix Performance - Costa Mesa, CA

Oddly, the modern luxury sedan, a beast that should epitomize silent might, doesn't. Most big-dollar four-doors are brash, showy machines, Trump buildings on wheels. Which is why the 2011 Audi A8, a car of few figurative words, is king of them all.

First impressions are deceiving. The A8's direct-injected, 4.2-liter V-8 produces 372 hp, one of the lowest power ratings in its class. From behind the wheel, you hear un-luxe things like wind noise and tire thrum. This is not the staggering isolation of a Lexus LS 460 or the Saturn V blastoff of a Porsche Panamera S. What it is is restrained.

And then time passes. Fifteen minutes in, you hit a stoplight and become mesmerized by the Audi's interior, a sea of wood and brushed aluminum and a masterpiece of industrial design. Half an hour later, you find yourself unintentionally on the highway, driving just to drive. Audis are known for being subtle, but the A8 is so gloriously reserved that it acts like a kind of vehicular Valium — you have no choice but to check your worries at the door.

Like most range-toppers, the A8 is heavy on tech wizardry. The Audi's body is aluminum, which helps keep curb weight down and boosts fuel economy. Adjustable air suspension, variable-ratio steering, and all-wheel drive are all standard, and the automatic-torque-vectoring rear differential from the 2011 S4 — a magic box of gears — helps the A8 corner like the world's largest rally car. The optional 1400-watt Bang & Olufsen stereo sounds exactly like you expect it to (excellent), and the velvety eight-speed automatic shifts like you want it to (quickly, smoothly). A collision-mitigation system can sense an imminent crash, automatically applying the brakes and reducing impact speed. This is luxury with purpose, tech for more than just tech's sake.

What it isn't is obvious. The A8 is a velvety, understated gem, and it makes every other sedan on the planet look insecure, prehistoric, or both.

Meet the antidote: the Lotus Evora, a small, fierce, featherweight midengine sports car that makes other sports cars feel like square-wheeled oxcarts.

Lotus was founded after World War II by an English aerodynamicist named Colin Chapman who was obsessed with reducing the mass of his cars to the absolute minimum — "add lightness" is how he put it. Chapman died in 1982 and the company staggered through decades of money troubles, but in 1995 it hit gold with the Lotus Elise — a tiny midengine, aluminum-chassis two-seater weighing about two thousand pounds. Powered by a screaming little Toyota engine, the Elise is a complete joy to drive hard — crazy, laughing-like-a-lunatic fun. Its chassis-dynamics engineer ought to be the fifth head on Mount Rushmore.

The problem: The Elise is a shoe box, impossible to get into. Parking valets have been known to quit on the spot.

This year Lotus rolls out the Evora — bigger than the Elise but still small, about five inches shorter than a Porsche 911 and just over three thousand pounds. It's a midengine two-plus-two — which is to say, it has tiny little backseats like the Porsche 911 — and unlike the Elise, it has a beautiful, finely crafted interior of French-stitched En-glish leather and brushed aluminum. But in all the scaling up and civilizing of the Evora, the Lotus gospel of elemental function and light weight has been preserved.

Powered by a feverish 276-hp Toyota V-6 mounted transversely and a six-speed manual gearbox, and strung on a race-car-pure suspension of coil-overs and wishbones — not a computer in sight — the Lotus covers the ground to 60 mph in under five seconds and flits and dives from corner to corner like Rimsky-Korsakov's bumblebee. This thing corners so hard, it could peel the bark off a tree.

Lotus has patented a kind of easy, predictable balance and directness so even average drivers walk away from the car feeling like Mario Andretti. At $73,500, what you have here is the everyman's Ferrari.