Autocar October 26, 2022

THE EXCITEMENT of this year’s Best Affordable Driver’s Car showdown is conveyed brilliantly by Richard Lane (p48). It’s a joyous reflection of some of the best cars from the past decade – and our road testers just about agree on a winner (can you guess?) – yet it’s also a damning appraisal of today’s cars, because there were not enough new models worthy of this title to warrant a fresh face-off this year. Is the modern-day affordable driver’s car dead, then? Perhaps, as we know it. A few, notably Toyota, are clinging on to brilliant combustion-engined enthusiast cars, but these were the first to go as the car industry streamlined and invested billions in electrification. There’s plenty of criticism over how fun electric cars can be, with lardy batteries and lack of…

“It will have all the characteristics today’s Caterham customers know well: lightness, simplicity, agility and performance” Caterham Cars is working on an ambitious, three-pronged plan for the post-2030 electrification era. This involves building the muchloved petrol Seven for at least another decade, while using that time to develop a sameshape Seven EV and launch an all-new aerodynamic electric roadster that will draw on the traditional Caterham values of lightness, performance, simplicity and agility. Outlining the plan exclusively to Autocar, Caterham CEO Bob Laishley drew a picture of business that’s currently booming: the firm last year built 500 cars and sold 670, the ‘extras’ adding to a waiting list that now runs to about a year. In the short term, he wants to expand the company’s traditional annual output of 500 to cover…

THE EXCITEMENT of this year’s Best Affordable Driver’s Car showdown is conveyed brilliantly by Richard Lane (p48). It’s a joyous reflection of some of the best cars from the past decade – and our road testers just about agree on a winner (can you guess?) – yet it’s also a damning appraisal of today’s cars, because there were not enough new models worthy of this title to warrant a fresh face-off this year. Is the modern-day affordable driver’s car dead, then? Perhaps, as we know it. A few, notably Toyota, are clinging on to brilliant combustion-engined enthusiast cars, but these were the first to go as the car industry streamlined and invested billions in electrification. There’s plenty of criticism over how fun electric cars can be, with lardy batteries and…

Bob Laishley, an engineer by training, joined Caterham after a 25-year career at Nissan just as the 2020 Covid outbreak began. His first job was to be the company’s parttime chief strategy officer, tasked with finding ways to boost production because it was plain that the company could sell more cars than its usual 500 a year. In the first months of 2021, the company was bought by VT Holdings, a large Japanese trading group that was, among other things, the Seven’s Japanese importer. Within a couple of months, Caterham’s CEO of 10 years, Graham Macdonald, decided to retire and Laishley, who had been enjoying part-time working but was known through his Nissan connections to VT Holdings CEO Kazuho Takahashi, was persuaded to take on the CEO’s role. Laishley says he was…

“It will have all the characteristics today’s Caterham customers know well: lightness, simplicity, agility and performance” Caterham Cars is working on an ambitious, three-pronged plan for the post-2030 electrification era. This involves building the muchloved petrol Seven for at least another decade, while using that time to develop a sameshape Seven EV and launch an all-new aerodynamic electric roadster that will draw on the traditional Caterham values of lightness, performance, simplicity and agility. Outlining the plan exclusively to Autocar, Caterham CEO Bob Laishley drew a picture of business that’s currently booming: the firm last year built 500 cars and sold 670, the ‘extras’ adding to a waiting list that now runs to about a year. In the short term, he wants to expand the company’s traditional annual output of 500…

When Lotus founder Colin Chapman launched the Seven in 1957, it was considered to be the embodiment of his rare design skills in the way it took components from ordinary cars and combined them – cheaply – in a way that delivered five times the performance and 10 times the excitement. The car soon won a high reputation for affordability and surprising performance on the track, and it was built (both by home-builders and in the factory) with a huge variety of engines. The Seven stayed successfully in production as a Lotus until 1972 but Chapman’s other dominant characteristic was an insatiable desire for progress: for him, the Seven came to be old hat. He willingly sold the rights to the car to a canny Caterham garage owner and dealer, Graham Nearn,…