The Origin Story

 

 

TL;DR trip down memory lane

Looking forward to visiting the Caterham factory next week made me realize that most of the cars that are on display on the first floor have some significance to me. Circling back to the very first introduction post in which I explained how the Caterham was not a random impulse purchase, I will detail the various phases of my introduction to the Seven.

Having been raised in a family where the classic Mini was the cheap car of choice, any encounter with a Moke on the seaside was the highlight of the day. The Moke was the gateway to the Seven, for obvious Prisoner reasons. As we are talking pre- or early 1990's, I cannot recall how my father was able to show me a picture of a Seven in a pre-internet world. It cannot be from his collection of Corgi cars as while there are at least 3 Minis, the first Batmobile, the James Bond car, the Green Hornet, and all sorts of 60s goodies, there is no Seven to be found.

Years passed, I got my classic Mini Cooper (red with white stripes, union jack on the roof) and went to Spa-Francorchamps with friends to watch some Mini Miglia racing during the Spa Euro Race week-end. More than the Minis, the Caterham got all my attention. So much so that I can say with confidence that June 8th 2003 was the day I decided that I would get one someday.

The CSR chassis was realeased soon after that. As I was still young and impressionable, I thought the larger SV chassis looked cool, more agressive. Today I just can't stand it unless hidden by appropriate colors and stripes. I concess that everybody is not built like a jockey and bulkier people really need the extra space.

A bit later, the introduction of the Superlight family with the Superlight R500 in particular, which led to some hoarding of wallpaper-esque pictures. I really liked the double stipes, and have played with some image editing to configure a white Caterham with blue stripes.

Every few years the idea came back, some pictures and favourite exterior configurations were stored in random folders.

When we went to Netherlands to buy my friend's Elise, I was mostly busy checking out a Caterham, so tiny, so impractical with the full roof on, no lowered floor at the time, with quite a large steering wheel.

It's about that time that I got the "Seven Passion" book, religiously shelved with all the Mini Cooper books and Haynes manuals.

Then came the first 620R demonstrator, blue with the 3 orange stripes. I still have a picture in my album of Facebook covers, where it's flying over some kind of bridge. It was 10 years ago already.

Later on, the modified orange 310R driven by James May in Madagascar made for an entertaining evening. 

So here we are, over 20 years later I'm nearly daily-driving my LE60-CAT replica with the tiniest Suzuki engine. Over those 20 odd years of waiting, I've only encountered 3 Sevens in the wild : 2 on the motorway and one a nearby street. All that time it seemed that owning one would be a true ordeal, involving all the nonsense of going through an invidual homologation process and all.

Next Wednesday I will meet my heroes : the white R500 with red stripes, LE60-CAT, the small Suzuki-powered models, and the 310R from The Grand Tour.

The CSR Twenty just got released to celebrate the 20 years of the CSR, it's an SV with adequate decals, a great choice of colours and a stunning union-jack grille. The specific CSR dashboard/interior seems to have disappeared at some point, probably for the best. I think it's the most expensive Caterham to date.  Sadly it won't be at the factory on the day we visit as it's touring the UK distributors.