Caterham Seven Roadsport SV
"This is for real drivers - but not for me"
Jeremy Clarkson
The week before last, during that mini heatwave, I left work at about eight o’clock and cruised, top down, up to the traffic lights under the A40 flyover in west London.
A right turn would take me back to my flat, a superheated box with neither garden nor air. Then I’d be forced to lie awake all night long, stuck fast to the sheets, listening to policemen tearing up and down Westbourne Grove while testing their sirens.
A left turn, however, would take me to the tranquillity of the Cotswolds and my family. Here I would be able to sleep with nothing to wake me save the shush-hush of the barley and the pitter-patter of tiny foxes nibbling at the chicken run. And that’s why I went left.
It was a good decision, too. Because after some 40 minutes I turned off the motorway and, with the sun a six-inch coin of brilliant scarlet light in an utterly clear, deep-blue sky, I mashed my foot into the SL’s thick, velvety carpet, and went absolutely barking mad. I braked hard into each corner, nudging the gear lever once, twice and sometimes three times to keep the revs right up, until I hit the apex of the corner, and buried the throttle once more.
The tarmac was hot and sticky, and it crackled slightly as the new Michelins cut through it like water skis on a windless lake. And rising above it all, as wave after wave of power and torque surged down the prop shaft, came the hard-edged, machinegun, staccato roar of that supercharged Mercedes V8 engine.
It was enough to make a man quite chubby with excitement. And with the sun beginning to kiss the western horizon I remember thinking, “Well, if I hit a tree now, I’ll at least be going out on a high.”
It was a wonderful drive home. Me and the machine, not just singing in perfect harmony but fused in a bout of gaily abandoned man-love. This was the raw, undiluted pleasure of driving almost for driving’s sake.
Except, of course, that’s rubbish, because it wasn’t raw or undiluted at all. The Mercedes puts up a firewall comprising about a million gigabytes of silicon between the driver and the business end of things. It’s got a braking assistance system and computer-controlled air suspension, along with traction control, power steering and a fly-by-wire throttle. I was driving a facsimile of a car, rather than the real thing: it moaned and groaned and twitched and flinched just like the true item, but in my heart of hearts I knew that I was making love to little more than a hologram.
All modern cars isolate you from the road, they cocoon you in a safe, quiet, world of velour and Radio 2 and air-conditioning. The wind that ruffles your hair in a modern convertible isn’t wind at all, rather a gentle breeze that has been massaged by an aerodynamics engineer somewhere in Frankfurt. And the nice rorty little rasp from your exhaust at 5000rpm was in fact put there by someone in an anechoic chamber in Stuttgart. So when you’re in a car, you’re really in the Matrix.
In the past I’ve never been able to get out, to smell real air and hear real engine noises. I was never able to do the Keanu Reeves thing because at 6ft 5in I’ve always been much too tall to fit into a Caterham Seven.
Now, though, there’s a longer, wider version available for the chap with the fuller, longer figure. And last weekend I gave it a whirl.
Bloody Hell Fire and Holy Mother of Christ: apart from being bigger, it was a whole lot more powerful to boot. In fact, it offers up 442bhp per ton, and nothing else on the road even gets close to doing that. A Ferrari 575, for instance, produces a figure of only 298bhp per ton, while the Lamborghini Murciélago manages 319bhp per ton.
At first you’ll wonder where the power has gone. But that’s because you’ll be changing up when the noise and the vibrations become intolerable. But don’t. In fact you change up when blood is spurting out of your ears and your right foot has been shaken clean off your ankle. Then you discover where the power is — hiding its massive bulk in the uppermost reaches of the rev band.
Go there and no matter what you happen to be driving right now, you’ll be surprised at the punch it delivers. I know I was.
What’s more, you can actually see the suspension working, and the brakes too, and when you turn the wheel the road wheels move, right in front of your eyes. You can place this car bang-on target every time. Not just near the white line, as you would in a painfully slow Lambo or a pedestrian Ferrari, but bang-on that line.
I’ve always assumed that a car like this would feel like an extension of your hands and feet, but it’s the other way round.
I felt like a part of it, an organic component but a component nevertheless.
You use a normal car to take you somewhere and it tries to make that journey as pleasant as possible. But you would never use a Caterham as a means of transport because this is driving for the buzz of it, and as a result you’re not a passenger. You are there to do a job, which means you are no more and no less important than one of the pistons or the windscreen wipers.
This is the real deal. Everything that happens happens because it happens. Not because some German in a white coat thinks it should happen. The marketing department has not created the noises, the jolts and the acceleration. They’re there because this is a light, powerful sports car and these are the characteristics you must expect of such a thing.
I didn’t like it. Partly because I still don’t fit properly — the steering wheel sits on my thighs, which means I simply could not apply any opposite-lock in an emergency. Also, while Caterham will build a car for you, it’s designed to be a kit that you build yourself. That’s why it bypasses regulations on noise, safety and emissions. Great, but I’d never fully trust anything I’d built myself: I’d always assume that a wheel was about to fall off.
Most of all, though, I didn’t like the Caterham because it was like camping. The roof looks so terrible that you can’t possibly drive around with it up. But then again, it’s so fiddly that you can’t possibly drive with it down either. Plainly it was designed by a man who likes to sleep out at night, possibly with some boy scouts, far from anywhere, with just a thin layer of canvas between him, the boys and the rain.
And then there’s the business of what you should wear when driving the Caterham.
This is the only car that demands a trip down to Millets before embarking on even the shortest journey.
You need a woolly bobble hat, an anorak and some Rohan trousers. There’s an almost wilful lack of style to this kind of motoring, you see. AA Gill described his run from the station in my wife’s Caterham last year as “the worst five minutes of my life”.
The problem here is that we are in the very furthest corner of motoring enthusiasm. And as is the way with all hobbies, things go off the rails when people start to take them too seriously.
Everyone likes to dangle a worm in the water from time to time. But the Caterham is the equivalent of getting up at three in the morning and sitting in the rain, on a canal bank, until it goes dark again.
Everyone looks up when Concorde flies over, but the Caterham is the equivalent of flying to Greece to see some Olympic 737s. Would you risk getting locked up for your love of this car? Man at Millets would.
I’m interested in motor racing but I don’t want to be a marshal. I find stamps pretty but I don’t want an album. I like music but I’m not going to build my own instruments. And I like driving but I’m far too old, rich, soft and poncey, and still slightly too big for what, without any doubt, is the ultimate driving machine.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Caterham Seven Roadsport SV
Engine type Four-cylinder, 1798cc, 16-valve
Power 200bhp @ 7500rpm
Torque 150 lb ft @ 5750rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual Suspension (front) Adjustable double
wishbone with anti-roll bar (rear) De Dion axle
Dimensions 3,530mm length; 1,685mm width; 1,685mm height
Tyres 195/45 R15
Fuel n/a
Top speed 138mph
Acceleration 0 to 60mph: 3.95sec
Price £35,860
Verdict "The ultimate driving machine, but too Milletts for me." Note: Jeremy drove a more powerfull version of the Seven than our hire cars.
| From The Sunday Times January 14, 2007
Brooke Double R/Caterham Seven
Nicholas Rufford and Jason Dawe pit two of Britain’s fastest stripped-down racers in a track duel
Caterham Seven
Jason Dawe
On the basis that Nick had arrived at the track 10 minutes before me it seemed only fair that he took first choice of cars. Unsurprisingly, he tossed me the keys to the cheaper, slower machine.
But in this company the word “slow” is relative, because despite boasting only 125bhp my Caterham Seven could leave a Nissan 350Z and BMW 335i for dead on the 0-60mph sprint, and give a £60,000 Porsche 911 Carrera a run for its money around Brands Hatch.
The Caterham’s energetic pace is all down to its kerb weight; at a mere 550kg it is nearly 1,000kg lighter than a Volkswagen Golf R32. And 1,000kg is a lot of extra weight — the entire England football team weighs in at less. So the Caterham is quick, but it’s also pretty basic. No power steering, no antilock braking, no elaborate stereo. In theory there is a roof, but in reality nobody was suggesting that both it and I could make it around the track together. With the roof in place cabin access requires a mixture of flexibility and good humour, the former of which I sadly lacked.
Even with the roof removed, access to the cabin requires a bit of thought — a hand here, a foot there, don’t touch that bit. It seemed to work, although the handbrake did almost provide a moment of Carry on Doctor as I sat down too far to the left. Once inside, it felt as if a large anaconda had swallowed me. Of course I am a tad larger than most and the racing harness and I both took a deep breath as we clamped what is effectively a 56in chest into place.
Starting the Caterham’s 1.6 litre engine produced a reassuring burble from the side-mounted exhaust pipe running just a few inches to my right. It’s this engine that is the big news for Caterham: after years of loyal service the Rover K-series engine is being phased out and Caterham believes the torquier, more powerful range of units is just what the Seven needs to safeguard its future.
Compared with Nick’s rear-mounted 260bhp monster my Sigma engine sounded a little subdued, but it was when we got on the track that these cars came into their own. Nick made a pretty big deal of moving off. In an effort to avoid contact I give him a 50-yard head start and then — hold on to your hats. The Caterham is more like a go-kart than a car: think about changing direction or accelerating and suddenly you are doing it. A blip of the throttle and I’m reaching for second gear, then third. I’ve no idea how fast I’m going, all I know is that I’m 2ft from the nearside of Nick’s car and about 6ft from the rear bumper of the photographer’s 4x4. Now I understand what it must be like to be a Red Arrows pilot: complete trust in your colleagues, mongoose quick reactions, man and machine in perfect harmony.
After three laps of filming it’s time to take the cars for a proper blat. I peel left down the start/finish line and, keeping the throttle wide open, enter Paddock Hill Bend a tad quicker than anticipated. I prod the brakes amateurishly and shed some speed before realising that the Caterham Seven would have made the corner easily had my nerve held.
Then it’s flat out up Hailwood Hill before the tricky Druids apex, confidence building as I use some power to get the Caterham drifting around the hairpin — great fun. Back down the hill and through the left-hander — lovely — before another flat-out run up Cooper Straight and a flick left through Surtees.
True to form I mess up my turn into McLaren and come through Clark Curve more slowly and off line than you could possibly believe. Finally it’s back on the power for a gallop down the Brabham Straight and across the line to begin a fresh attempt at making a cleaner run of it.
I have no idea how many laps I did, or what speed I achieved, but I became aware that I hadn’t seen Nick for a while. Whether he was in front or behind I couldn’t tell. With no radio link to the pits I slowed to a crawl, put on my hazards and waited for him to catch up. It transpired a marshal’s flag was out, he had returned to the pits, and it was time for me to do the same.
Back in the pit lane we compared notes. Both cars felt properly quick and both were huge fun to drive. Despite a price difference of more than £10,000 and power gap of more than 100bhp the Caterham Seven and Brooke Double R manage to achieve a similar trick, making driving an organic rather than mechanical experience (if you have ever ridden a horse you will know what I mean).
But don’t be fooled by those road testers who say that cars like the Caterham Seven and Brooke Double R have the feel of machines from yesteryear. Because cars from the past were never as quick, never handled as well or stopped so promptly. In every respect these little road racers are thoroughly modern machines.
So if you want to remember what motoring was originally intended to be about, I suggest you strap yourself into the seats of either of these cars. It will put a grin on your face and a spring in your step.
Vital statistics
Model Caterham Seven Roadsport 125
Engine type 1,600cc, 4-cylinders
Power/Torque 125bhp / 120lb ft
Fuel/CO2 38mpg / 173g/km
Acceleration 0-60mph:5.9sec
Top speed 112mph
Price (built) £18,495
Verdict Cheap thrills!
Rating 4/5 Note: our new cars are the 150hp. version.
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