In 1952 Colin Chapman founded the Lotus Group with an aim to design and build high performance world renowned performance cars. With a background in structural engineering and aeronautical design techniques he had the perfect grounding to take automotive design to the next level. After several years researching, designing and building race cars, the Lotus Seven was born. In 1957 the Lotus Seven was debuted at the Earls Court Motor Show in London and represented one of the most advanced motorcars of is time. The lotus Group quickly put the Seven into full time production for the great demand from customers who wanted a car which performed beautifully on the track but was also road legal.
Lotus continued production until 1973 when Caterham Cars obtained the manufacturing rights from Lotus, Caterham continued to tweak the car but the fundamental design was nearly impossible improve upon. To the current day the now named Caterham Seven continues to be very popular to race enthusiasts and car hobbyists.
The latest Car to come out of the Caterham headquaters is the almighty Caterham Seven R400, this is a 210bhp car weighing only 500kg equating to 420bhp per ton! With all round wishbone suspension and tight steering and a 0 to 60 time of 4.7 seconds the R400 can leave standing almost any other car on the road!
If you have never heard of Caterham's before you may be surprised that you can buy your own Caterham Seven in kit form. For around £13,000 you can get all of the parts you need to build your car in your own garage using fairly standard garage tools, this includes everything from engine to dust-cap's.
Above you can see how tightly the engine is squeezed into these little cars, once the bonnet is on there is very little room under there! As is the same when you sit in the car, the driver and passenger compartment's are divided by the drive shaft running to the rear of the car. To get into the driver seat you must first stand on the seat, lower yourself down and sliding your legs down towards the pedals. In most cars the seats aren't adjustable and need to be tailored when being built for the specific owner. If you want a pure bread classic road race car with modern engineering standards the Caterham Seven meets all of these criteria.
If you enjoyed this post please feel free to buy me a gingerbread late! mmmm!
