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Light and nimble Caterham hits the sports car sweet spot
IT’S a tricky balance when you’re building a sports car – add too much power and not enough grip and you risk running out of road.
Caterham – and predecessors Lotus – have always been keen on “adding lightness”.
Occasionally they go nuts and add lots of power, too. I drove their supercharged 620S version last summer and if you like wheelspin it was great.
But, in the outside lane of a dry motorway at 70mph, wheelspin is not always beneficial. This is especially true when your exposed bonce is at the same height as a 40 tonne HGV’s wheel nuts, just inches away.
So while the bonkers Caterham 620S was a supercharged scream, I’d argue that the power, weight, grip and balance was somewhat compromised by adding 310bhp to a car that weighs just 610kgs.
So, even though we were still in the depths of winter, I had no qualms about driving the new Caterham 310S with “only” 152bhp.
The day it turned up it rained, which involved a very hasty roof erection in semi-darkness.
I faffed about in a supermarket car park with press studs and Velcro straps while bored men asked inane questions about the car. Note: Caterhams have windscreen wipers the length of a toothbrush.
The drive home on cold, rain-lashed roads was interesting. There’s no ESC or ABS on these things. Well, there is, it’s just your feet and hands.
The demister is the back of your hand. And you can forget full beam. The blue light to indicate full beam is brighter than a MIG welder and will blind you for several days.
But finding grip is actually quite easy because with “only” 152bhp and 540kgs, the Avon tyres aren’t overcome and with the car fitting around you like a metal glove, the feedback you get from the tyres is almost synaptic.
Every part of you touches a part of the car and every part feeds back critical information.
The side-plate-sized steering wheel needs a lot of input at slow speeds but as you up the pace it’s just a case of making microscopic adjustments.
Approaching the boundaries of grip, it’s actually the throttle pedal you use to steer – as effective as the steering wheel in altering the pitch and yaw of the car through corners.
Anyone who’s been indoor karting on a slippery painted floor will be familiar with this sensation. You can take the piss – safely.
This was not the case in the mental 620S. I’m sure Stig types wouldn’t be fazed but for ham-fisted me I always felt a bit like the poor rear tyres – overwhelmed.
The 310S is, I think, a sweet spot for Caterham. A question of less is actually more. A purple patch. A car you can drive year round without feeling it’s always trying to bite you on the bum.
I even drove it to Heathrow and back in the rain, at night. And you know what? That’s the way to liven up a dull motorway commute.
I only wish I’d remembered to take some ear plugs.
And then there’s the price of this normally aspirated Ford-engined tiddler.
It’s twenty-five grand factory built – twenty-seven and a half if you opt for the “wide body” option (trust me, it isn’t).
It might seem a lot for a car with the worst el-cheapo switchgear imaginable but reference the fun-per-pound equation and there’s not much that comes close in pure driving sensation and excitement. The crazy 610S is closer to £50k. But it’s unlikely you’ll be able to manage a Caterham as your daily drive. This is a second car, or even a third, so on that basis the price is probably immaterial.
If you fit the above category, the Caterham 310S is highly, highly recommended.