Building a Sevenesque Roadster

The reason it’s named “Seven” is because that’s how many years it’ll take you to build it. I watched a friend go through this, totally cured me of the idea. An absolute metric shit-ton of work and you end with a car you - quite realistically - rarely drive. When you start this project as a young person, your priorities are clear: I want to drive around in a Caterham/Lotus Seven. Seven years later, your priorities have shifted somewhat and those 49-Dog-Years have erased the memory of the reasoning that caused you to start this project in the first place. Your friends have gone through an average of two motorbikes, two cars and three partners each, and discovered that multi-link suspension is awesome, fuel efficiency is important, garages are hard to come by and there’s only 12 weekends in the whole year when you might get a chance to go out on a bit of lark with your mates that involves vehicles.

Back in my twenties, during my college days, I had a beautiful red Seven that I got for a song, that went when you pressed down on the accelerator, but stopping was more of a suggestion. I logged a number of very long road trips on that Seven, in just about every kind of weather imaginable, all through the UK. I sold it to my brother, so I kind buy a new motorcycle, and he promptly wrapped the car around three or four trees on Mountain Road near where I grew up.

The new Caterham 7 is currently on my wishlist. I don't think I am in any rush to build my own, no matter how intriguing the thought might be. Project Cars with a VR headset and wheel also lets me scratch the itch, for now, of hurtling down PCH at speeds I would not recommend in the driving (virtual) rain.

I have a (real) Seven and a Lotus 23. The idea of driving them on the street is terrifying. You are eye-level with the bumper of a small SUV. A lifted brodozer might not even see you at all.

The amazing brightness of the Lotus handling is probably not going to be replicated by in a home garage with random car parts, unfortunately. Get a NA or NB Miata.

Built a Caterham with a colleague once. Gotta say it probably wasn't worth it. I didn't learn as much about cars as I'd thought, eg I still don't really understand the engineering tradeoffs between different suspension types.

In terms of actually getting it built it was pretty much an advanced IKEA package requiring some specialised equipment, and it took us ages to get done.

Can't say the car is that fun to drive either. If you want to feel crazy acceleration just get a friend to show you their Tesla. The Caterham will cause some chuckles when you lift the clutch too fast for the 10th time that day, and feels flimsy. Fun, but probably not tens of grands fun.

There are still Prisoner fans? [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/z0rio3IPXXU

Here’s the ticket: highlandcaterhamhire.com

Book the yellow one.