The Telegraph article reports that the prosecution failed to disprove the defence claims and accepted O’Reilly’s basis of plea. The builder from Canal Bridge in Willington, Derbys, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving on the basis that he had driven at just 105mph.

Handing him a £5,000 fine and two-year driving ban, Judge Andrew Hamilton said: “May I make it absolutely clear that had you been driving at 150mph you would have been going immediately to prison.

“However, you were not driving at 150mph, you were driving at 105mph, and for whatever reason the prosecution have accepted that basis of plea, and that puts the case in a different light.”

O’Reilly sold the Lotus to a buyer in Germany for about £9,000 a month after the offence was committed on the A515 between Buxton and Ashbourne on July 12. 

Asked by the judge why the prosecution case had not involved tests of the Lotus in Germany, she added: “The defendant has asserted that the car could not have done that speed. Inquiries have been made as far as they can be and we can’t go further than that.  “It may be because our defendant is fortunate in the circumstances that the car has been moved very quickly from the country.”  But Dominic Shelley, defending, said “slippage” with speeding devices or human error can account for such disparities in recorded and actual speeds.  “They (Lotus Elises) are not built for that speed and the likelihood of one being able to keep control of such a vehicle at that speed is beyond comprehension,” he said.