Zen and the art of four-wheeled motorcycling
Living with a bare-bones sports car every day could be lots of things, but it won’t be dull.
As first journeys go, this isn’t a best-case scenario for our new Caterham Seven: a 150-mile grind from Sussex to Lincolnshire, through the traffic chaos emanating from a closed M25. Without sat-nav and with my sense of direction (or lack of) it takes five and a half hours, almost exclusively spent in traffic jams and average-speed-camera zones.
With the NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) levels of an industrial threshing machine, the Seven is not a happy car on the motorway.
I stop halfway home to put the hood up, and don’t do quite as taut a job as I should (I’ve since learnt the knack). Above 60mph the wind whips it rhythmically against the frame. Flap, flap, flap. At about the same speed, fifth gear has a slight but insistent whine. Somehow six decades of development still hasn’t blessed the Seven with self-cancelling indicators, so every time you use them they emit an electronic nails-on-blackboard bleep to remind you to switch them off and avoid a roguish lamp winking away at traffic around you. Neep, neep, neep.
It’s dark by the time I’ve flap-flapped, neep-neeped, whined and roared my way home, and I remember I didn’t get a chance to clear space in the garage for the Seven beforehand. A bit like returning from a long-haul flight, ready to collapse into bed, before remembering that you stripped the covers before you went. After exchanging lawnmower, bicycles and another car for the Caterham, lit by its headlights and neighbours’ twitching curtains, I yoga my way out of the cockpit, almost on hands and knees (the side screens can’t open fully in the garage). I’m exhausted, vaguely sun-stroked and with a ringing in my ears that won’t go away until the following morning. Yet as I close the garage door I feel like the jammiest bugger in the world. I could not feel luckier to have this car to myself for the next few months.
Our Seven, picked up from
Caterham’s Crawley centre near Gatwick, where it’s surrounded by other alluring Sevens in all hues and trims, is a 360. That means it sits bang in the middle of Caterham’s numerically ordered range, approximately named after power-to-weight ratios. The humbler 270 and 310 use Ford’s 1.6-litre Sigma engine; the 360 is the cheapest Seven available with the 2.0-litre Ford Duratec engine. The 420 and 620 above it use the same engine, tuned for headier power outputs.
The 2.0-litre motor is torquier and burlier in feel than the Sigma but less eager and zingy; for now I’m undecided which I prefer. Regardless of engine, each Seven is also available in a choice of either road-friendly S or track-orientated R trim. Ours is a 360S, which means it has a full windscreen, hood and side screens (handy), a heater (ditto) and slightly softer suspension. It misses out on the R’s race seats, lighter flywheel, limited-slip diff, rear anti-roll bar and uprated brakes.
Or at least it would, except our car is a bit of a crossbreed in that it’s an S with some R bits added as options. So while it has leather seats and weather protection, it also has the diff, rear suspension mods and brake upgrades. It might just be the best of both worlds. We’ll see.
Next stop Sussex, to meet with contributing editor Ben Whitworth and his Renault Zoe. ‘You’re a lucky boy,’ he says, wistfully remembering the Seven 160 he ran on these pages in 2013 and ’14. ‘Just remember to pack earplugs.’
If only I’d thought of that earlier. But the journey is, in fact, so slow that wind noise isn’t a big deal. Frustrating as the congested trip may be, it also serves as a reminder
You can’t help but revel in the connection with your surroundings
that cars can be so much more than just transport. Whether you’re going from A to B or from A to A for the fun of it, you can’t help but revel in the exposure to the elements and connection with your surroundings, the sensation of speed and the simple joy of movement. The Seven’s creator, Colin Chapman, described it as ‘motorcycling on four wheels’. I feel like a kid on a bike again.
As I lock the garage and stumble off to bed, I figure that having survived – enjoyed, even
– a journey the 360S is so utterly unsuited to, the next few months are going to be pretty special.