Caterham Super Seven, caterham 7, R500, SuperSport, Lotus, costs, stats, specs, photos, video, links, history, contacts etc

 

~ Super Seven - some full reviews ~

 

Auto Express - Caterham Super Seven

There is little else on four wheels that is as small, light and nimble as the Caterham Super Seven. And, unlike its few rivals, the Caterham has a heritage to boast about, being derived from the classic Lotus Seven. A bare-bones two-seater, there is just enough space to cram in a couple of squashy bags behind the seats, plus pairs of skinny legs into the narrow footwells. With 1.6-litre Vauxhall or 1.6/1.8-litre Rover K-series engines in various tune, the Seven's minimal weight ensures even with the lower-powered engines performance is hugely entertaining. Suspension is set up to the buyer's requirements, pliant for lots of road use, firmer for road and track. Whatever the decision, the Seven feels as if it was bred for racing. The tiny steering wheel responds immediately to the touch, the short-throw gearshift is positive, throttle response lightning fast. A quick drive along twisty lanes highlights the Seven's immensely likeable character.

Tiff Needell - Top Gear - R500

The war between Caterham and Westfield has been long and bloody. Surrey-based Caterham is the official guardian of the original Lotus Seven shape and model number, but their Midland rivals, Westfield, have been stepping on their toes – even to the point of a court case – ever since the launch of their lookalike Seven in ’83. When Caterham produced their screenless, 250bhp, Vauxhall two-litre-powered JPE model in ’92, it seemed they had created the ultimate Seven.

Record books were broken and its light weight was the main key to its success. Weighing in at just 515 kilos, it had a power-to-weight ratio of 485bhp per tonne and rocketed to 60 in a mere 3.7 seconds, but the arrival of the Single Vehicle Type Approval in July ’98 stopped it dead in its tracks as it failed on both noise and emissions. So Caterham’s honour was left in the hands of the 190bhp, Rover K-series-engined, 485-kilo Superlight R – but that took an astonishingly long four seconds to do the sprint to 60. Westfield seized their chance to steal the limelight and produced their featherweight FW400 that blew our Road Test Editor’s mind on the track, and his eardrums on the road, in issue 73.

Using the same 190bhp, K-series VHPD Rover engine, but in a car with a kerb weight of just 435 kilos thanks to its carbon-fibre construction, the FW400 got to 60mph in 3.6 seconds and became the new leader of the pack. Naturally, the onus was now on the southerners to fight back. They didn’t want to go to the vast expense and complication of trying to manufacture a carbon-fibre car for the road, so there was only one route to follow – lose more weight and find more power. With the VHPD engine in plentiful supply and already snugly fitted into the front of the Seven, they didn’t want to start looking for an alternative power source. The answer had to be to squeeze more power out of the existing engine, and race engine specialists,

Minister Race Engines, were brought in to help take up the challenge. Minister worked on the mechanics of the engine itself, adding Cosworth lightweight pistons, forged-steel, cross-drilled crank and forged-steel con-rods with finely tuned high-lift camshafts. Caterham did their bit too, by developing an inlet manifold that features a roller-barrel throttle – this gives an uninterrupted airflow on full opening.

There wasn’t a lot of room for weight-saving left in the chassis, but the more powerful engine also became lighter as the new innards together with the inlet manifold and a specially developed exhaust system – complete with carbon silencer – all saved weight. New wheels and seats saved a little more weight, as did the new magnesium alloy bell-housing and dry sump system. The resulting 230bhp and 460 kilos, when you get the calculator out, comes up with the magical power-to-weight ratio of 500bhp per tonne and, Caterham claims, a 0-60 time of just 3.4 seconds – not quite but very nearly, McLaren F1 figures (550bhp per tonne and 3.2secs) for a fraction of the cost.

You can buy the kit and build it yourself - or do the sensible thing and pay Caterham to do it for you. You should also add a windscreen complete with wipers, side-screens and a hood so you don’t have to drive around, possibly illegally, with full-face helmet on, or with so much wind in your face that a baby sparrow will seem like an elephant with wings if it hits you.

But the Caterham Superlight R500 isn’t supposed to be about comfort, it’s supposed to be the ultimate track day car. It will burble along with quite comfortable noise levels on the open roads, making it more user friendly than the Westfield, but start winding on those revs and it’ll tear your head off. The six speeds of the Caterham ‘box pass so fast you’re never sure which one your in. The stubby lever has so little movement that it’s position doesn’t give you much of a clue either, and initially there’s a constant terror of dropping from fifth to second instead of fourth, or, even worse, changing ‘up’ from fourth to third instead of fifth as the hypnotic gearchange lights tempt you all the way to the 9,200rpm limit. Little has changed in the way the Seven handles, it all just happens that bit faster. It’s rather like an exaggerated nervous tic. Slides have to be killed very early with a deft flick of opposite lock. Sensations, both through the steering and great-fitting new lightweight seats, scream so loud you can feel everything that is going on beneath you, but try to hold the Seven in a long graceful powerslide and you’ll end up facing the wrong way down the track. It’s all mind boggling stuff, intended more for track use than on the road.

Thirty two grand would buy you something flash and comfy like a 328I convertible or SLK, or perhaps something raunchier like a four-litre Chimaera, but on a circuit they’d be completely devoured by this Seven, as would just about any other road car, at any price.

The Telegraph - Caterham Seven

THE Caterham Seven sports car has a distinguished history: Graham Hill raced one in 1958, and a Seven (registration number kar 120c) starred in the cult Sixties television series The Prisoner. But the car has a distinguished present, too. Still in production after more than 40 years, the Seven is that rare contradiction in terms: a classic British sports model, available brand new.

It was known as a Lotus Seven until Caterham Cars, which had always been involved in the building of Sevens, bought out the production rights in 1973. Since then, a million cosmetic design innovations have come and gone elsewhere, and the Seven has soulfully ignored pretty much every one of them. It still has cheese grater-style air vents slashed into the bonnet; a pair of unfashionably spherical, chrome-cased headlamps which perk up proudly above wheel-arches (which themselves resemble Second World War-period motorcycle mudguards); and a racing car's radiator grille with the figure seven wired into it. And it is still very small.

One cannot overstress just how small. The car is barely wider than two adults, shoulder-to-shoulder, and barely longer than one adult lying down. It rises to slightly under waist height from the ground. I drove up behind a Mini at one point and felt dwarfed. At large on today's roads, the Seven looks as if it might have broken loose from an extremely up-market merry-go-round. If you happen to believe that car factories are a corporate conspiracy aimed at depriving ordinary people of fun, you can buy this car in bits and assemble it yourself. 'Building time is typically around 70 hours,' according to the company's literature. I wouldn't know. I tend to feel more at ease driving cars which have been bolted together by someone - anyone - other than me, so I tested one which Caterham had made earlier.

The experience was, in many respects, rigorously spartan, properly puritan. Unlike almost every other vehicle on the market, the Seven has no interest in you and your absurd desire to be cosseted. Accordingly, you don't really climb into it; you pull it on, like a sleeping-bag, with all the attendant indignities involved. Once inside, you are wedged so tight that forcing the seat belt into the clip by your thigh involves an act of contortion worthy of Houdini. Once the car is running, the jokes about Dinky toys and Airfix kits dry up. The engine pulls and roars wildly through the six close ratio gears. The clip-on roof is best rolled up and stowed in the boot. Only with your hair in the air can you properly attend to the engine's tremendous noise and catch the waft of your own exhaust.

Rocketing around corners and thumping loudly over bumps, the car offers driving as a contact sport. You point the nose at the distance and hare off after it, and the sense you have of control over your own destiny is rawer and more addictive than any experience available in better-mannered sports cars, such as a Mazda MX5 or an MGF (with which the K-series Seven shares a Rover engine).

Driving a Seven requires confidence. The steering-wheel, pedals and gear-shift need commanding hands and feet. You also need to be able to cope mentally with the reactions of your fellow road-users, many of whom are unusually animated upon finding themselves braking to avoid Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And it must not disturb you that, in multi-lane traffic, the bumpers of other cars going 70mph are at cheek height.

I'm going to stick my neck out here (a manoeuvre I would not recommend while driving the Seven) and suggest that it will never become the single-car-family's vehicle of choice. It could be your second or third car, though. You would take it to club days and race tracks where you would talk to other people who owned Caterhams and who understood the gleam in your eye. You would keep it in a garage until the sun shone. And you would never bother with the snap-on roof. If the weather turned, you would simply spin home and worry later about sluicing out the cockpit.

This was not an option open to me on the day I returned the car to Caterham and got caught beneath a vigorous cloud-burst just outside Purley. As I wrestled in the rain with plastic and poppers, this car from another time began to look like a car for another place. If only Britain did weather as well as Caterham does sports cars.

What Car - Caterham Seven

Anyone looking for an anti-establishment symbol of the new millennium should look no further than the Caterham Seven Superlight R500. It does without doors, windscreen, hood or any other creature comfort, but serves up an intoxicating cocktail of sheer delight. Its 1.8-litre Rover K-series engine produces 230bhp at 8600rpm, while the Caterham tips the scales at just 460kg, giving the car designers' magic figure of 500bhp per tonne. Performance is suitably striking with 0-60mph taking just 3.4sec. The hyper-sharp steering, powerful brakes, and short-throw, six-speed gearbox are such tactile delights that it's great at low speed, too. At £29,950 for a kit, or £32,000 fully built, the R500 isn't cheap, but four-wheeled fun comes no better.

 

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The most famous Seven - from the cult TV series "The Prisoner"