Currently reading: Unfinished business: Revisiting the Caterham Seven
Our man wanted to treat himself to a Caterham – and it had to be like the one he destroyed as a blithe 20-year-old

It’s some time in 1986. Your correspondent is both 20 years old and an idiot. An idiot on a race track for only the second time in his life. Three things point to impending disaster: the track is Goodwood, then and now one of the least forgiving in the land; the car is a Caterham Super Sprint, over which his gauche and inexperienced limbs exercise at best approximate control; and, fatally, he has a bunch of mates watching from the pits.

So when he comes around to the chicane at the end of his very first lap, he decides to show them what he and his car can do. Which is to reverse into an earth bank at great speed, with terminal consequences for the car. And had it not been for the helmet that he had been forced to jam on his head before heading out, undoubtedly terminal for him, too.

In the event, it’s said helmet and not the cranium beneath that splits in two as it impacts the Caterham’s low and potentially lethal (in these circumstances) old rollover bar.

That was 35 years ago; 35 years in which nothing – not owning another Caterham, building a third, racing a fourth and driving some hundreds more – has been able to remove that unfinished business from my head.

9 Frankel s caterham 1700 super sprint 2021 20

Then, last summer as we emerged from the first lockdown, I drove the new Super Seven, with its classic appearance, 135bhp output and Jenvey throttle bodies looking just like the pair of Weber carburettors that used to jut proudly from the offside of my old Seven’s bonnet.

I loved that car, not least because it reminded me powerfully that when a car looks right, sounds right and behaves in the right way, I don’t actually give a damn how quick it is.

But they took it away again, and I hated that. If that and more recent lockdowns had taught me anything about myself, it was only to confirm that what I love most in cars is a simple, honest machine that knows what it’s for and does that job better than anything else. So the only way to make sure that no one ever took a Caterham away from me again was to go out and buy one.

Back to top

It couldn’t just be any old Caterham, though. It had to be one that would finish the business that had been put so violently on hold at Goodwood all those years ago. Which meant just one thing: it needed a Crossflow engine.

To a certain sort of (probably older) enthusiast, the word ‘Crossflow’ produces sighs of delight, to others blank expressions. So at the risk of boring the former to inform the latter, the Crossflow was a version of Ford’s old Kent engine where the mixture was breathed in one side and then spat out of the other. You would have thought that was always an obvious way to do it, but apparently not.

8 Frankel s caterham 1700 super sprint 2021 13

Lotus started using the Kent in the Seven 60 years ago, when it was a 1.0-litre engine with 39bhp. After Caterham bought the rights to the car in 1973, it soon tuned the now crossflowed and 1.6-litre motor up to 110bhp for the Seven Sprint and then in 1985 introduced a version bored out to 1.7 litres with big valves, a hot camshaft and 135bhp to create the Super Sprint. Which is what I crashed at Goodwood. So I had to have that engine again.

The problem was that I didn’t want the rest of the car because there was so much about it that would today stop me enjoying it. The front suspension followed Colin Chapman’s old philosophy of using the anti-roll bar as the second half of the upper wishbone, which worked ever less well as ever more lateral forces were put through it. It also had a bone-jarring live rear axle, the standard short cockpit and a four-speed gearbox. What I really wanted was a modern Caterham with proper double wishbones at one end, a De Dion tube at the other, the S3 long cockpit and a five-speed ’box. I wasn’t sure that such a thing even existed.

Back to top

But it did. I found it at Brands Hatch with Sevens & Classics, the business founded by ex-Caterham sales boss Andy Noble, who I’ve known for decades. It couldn’t have been more suited to my wishes: a 1997 car with the right chassis, suspension and gearbox, a polished aluminium and dark green body and, heaven be praised, not only a Crossflow but a newly rebuilt one.

I didn’t even know that Caterham had been still using the engine that recently; mine must have been one of the last Crossflow Sevens ever made. ❝ It has extraordinary throttle response, a wide but increasingly urgent powerband and a fabulous howl at the top end ❞ And it’s perfect. It handles like a new Caterham, it’s comfortable, it’s cosy with the roof up and heater on, it feels completely solid and, to me, it looks prettier than the modern cars, with their smaller headlights mounted farther forward on the nose.

Really, though, it’s all about the Crossflow. This is as blue-collar a motor as ever graced a Caterham engine bay, a lump of pushrodoperated Ford ironmongery, but my goodness does it have character. You have to tempt it to life on a cold day. You can hear it snuffling and coughing as you coax it from its slumbers with squirts of neat fuel into the big Webers. Then it catches and settles with a growl that couldn’t come from anything else. It has extraordinary throttle response, a wide but increasingly urgent powerband, a fabulous howl at the top end and all the pops and bangs that you could hope for on the overrun. And it’s light: that engine may be iron, but without a heavy twin-cam 16-valve head, it helps the Super Sprint to a 530kg kerb weight.

6 Frankel s caterham 1700 super sprint 2021 18

Back to top

So the first thing I did was get up at dawn one Sunday morning and head to the Welsh mountains in it. And as I flung it over those deserted roads, roads that I’ve been driving for almost as long as I’ve been driving Caterhams, I found myself pondering how it would be possible for less than £20,000 to have more fun with a steering wheel in your hands.

When the answer comes, I will let you know. Just don’t hold your breath. Because if you love driving and for this kind of money, nothing comes close – and I suspect it never will.

READ MORE

Electric Seven due in 2023 as first Caterham EV 

Lighten up: Why a 540kg Caterham Seven is the best driver's car 

Caterham acquired by Japanese firm VT Holdings

Join the debate

Comments
2
Add a comment…
JHart001 5 July 2021

Fantastic article - the first couple of paragraphs had me grinning from ear to ear.  The bravado of youth perfectly recalled.  Happy you have found 'your' seven.  Enjoy.

Ravon 3 July 2021

I much enjoyed the article and it mirrored my own first experience of Goodwood in a similarly engined Sylvia Phoenix kit car that I had laboured over for many months . I looked at your overall price/fun equation which sent me straight to EBay, and there I found what looks like a lovely twin Webered 1600 Crossflow powered Westfield Seven in BRG with a yellow nose band for a very reasonable six, nine, nine, five ! It doesn't have the badge snobbery of a genuine Caterham, but it does have proper independent rear suspension with double wishbones, which who knows, we may see on a Caterham one day ( soon ? ). So Andrew, I believe this may trump you ?