Iconic Minimalist Sports Car Gets Modern Makeover
Caterham has become renowned for its affordable track day cars. It’s a light sports car designed for nothing more than having a brilliant power-to-weight ratio and being incredibly fun to drive. Now, it’s reinvented itself with a rather interesting new project.
It’s an EV Seven, and the question is, how do you take inherently heavy componentry and make a lightweight car with a reputation for a lightweight, seat-of-your-pants driving experience? This particular Caterham has a single electric motor producing 179 kW with a battery capacity of 52 kWh. While small, it’s worth remembering that the Seven is a small track toy, with Caterham’s engineers reckoning it will sprint to 100 km/h in just over four seconds.
This project aims to create a track day car that can be driven on the road. The EV Seven isn’t currently being manufactured, but it’s ultimately an effort to develop a lightweight electric sports car that could eventually be produced.
While purists cherish the barebones performance approach and ease-of-maintenance factor, the notion behind the electric approach is a bit bizarre. With the inherent capital outlay and the core target market being traditional petrolheads people who love noise and petrol-powered fun it isn’t easy to see how there could be significant interest in a car of this disposition. We’ll see, though, how it plays out.
