Goodwood Test: 2021 Caterham 170S Review

Caterham make small cars, it makes cars based on a the Lotus Seven (if you didn’t know, that’s why they have the seven badge all over the place, and if you did, there are people who don’t). But, it’s never made a car as small as this one. The Caterham 170 makes most of the rest of the range look like they could shift a few pounds – it makes cars like the tiny Volkswagen Up! GTI look positively portly and laughs in the face of the Alpine A110’s sub-1,000kg figure.

This is a car made to fit to Japanese Kei regulations, so it’s got a tiny little engine, a tinier waistline and really not a lot else. But does that make it pretty much useless or is it an absolute masterstroke?

It looks like a Caterham Seven, just a small one. It’s now got some LED lights, both front and rear, there’s leather covering some of the roll hoop supports and that is this section done.

The Caterham 170S’s 660cc three-cylinder engine doesn’t promise much and, despite being given a turbocharger that lets off on each gearchange as if it’s a Mitsubishi Evo in a Tesco car park in 1998, delivers no more. There’s 84PS (62kW) at around 6,500rpm and 116Nm (86lb ft) of torque about 2,000rpm lower. Which is probably slightly more power than a hairdryer.

But that’s the magic of the tiny little Caterham, you don’t need 800PS to have fun, you don’t need four-wheel-drive, you don’t need sophisticated traction control systems, you really don’t need a heater. The 170 weighs around 460kg in S form, or 440 if you opt for the more sporty R package (complete with limited-slip diff) and lose the windscreen and doors. That means its power to weight ratio is around 180PS per litre. That’s about the same as an eighth generation Volkswagen Golf GTI.

But all of these stats and figures are a bit of a red herring. The Caterham 170 is not a fast car, it won’t rip your skin or rearrange your organs when you floor it. This is a car for the opposite of a straight. The 170 weighs so little, its tiny hamster engine slung right out toward the front axle to better distribute what little there is, that you can basically just turn into any corner without any thought for speed. The tyres are laughably small, 155 profile on the front and 165 on the rear, but that’s more than enough of a contact patch for something that almost confuses gravity. The little Caterham will grip, and then when it doesn’t there’s an instant connection to your brain telling you what’s going on and what should be done about it through the tiny, but wonderfully unassisted, Momo steering wheel. If you really try, and it’s something you’ll keep trying over and over again I promise, you can force understeer on turn in, but it’ll correct itself quite easily. A lift will bring everything back into line and then power, such that there is, will rotate the car through.

Combined with brakes with no servo but unreal feedback it becomes addictive. You can easily lose hours to the same stretch of road, perfecting just how hard you can chuck the little Caterham in and still gather everything together. The gearchange is clunky, mechanical and short and paired with pedals so close together you can hit all three with ease. Heal and toe is child’s play, but it’s actually a big toe-little toe process given you can fit both pedals on the ball of one foot with some overlap.

All the time you’re never going to be at speeds to threaten your license, because if you do it will become quite an uncomfortable experience. The tiny engine really needs to rev to accelerate, and with just five gears (four of which are geared to the shorter end of the spectrum) it’s really working by the time you hit 70mph. At that speed you’ll be exploring the fifth cog too, a slightly taller gear that the engine really isn’t a fan of. But you can just about do some longer distances in this, just maybe think about keeping them under an hour.

The interior of the Caterham Seven has always been interchangeable with the exterior. The roof comes off with a series of poppers like your toddler’s favourite coat, the doors literally lift off, and that’s of course only if you spec them.

To be serious, there has been a step up in quality in the latest Caterhams. That’s not to say we had much to complain about, but the leathers do feel nicer, which adds to details like the machined handbrake that have always been there. There is a fan, but that’s more for a hot day than cold, as it doesn’t produce heat. In some of the larger Caterhams the heat from the engine helps by syncing into the cabin, but on the 170 that engine is a) at the other end of the engine bay and b) the size of a travel bag, so there’s little warmth to be gained. It does have a heated windscreen, which is nice.

It cannot be stressed enough quite how small this Caterham is. There’s no SV body option (the wider one) on the 170, so you’ve got to live with what you get. Which in my case at a couple of inches over six foot two is juuust enough room to get my knees under the wheel, but a very real need to either buy some racing boots or take my shoes off altogether.

Must be some fancy carbon tech to get it that small right? Nope it’s just that tiny. The technology is an absolute minimum on the 170. It has drum brakes on the rear, there’s even leaf springs back there too, on a car launched in 2021. Frankly I’m amazed they added the fifth cog.

That heated windscreen is definitely the most high-tech thing in the 170, unless you count the windscreen washer? That said it does manage nearly 60mpg and put out less CO₂ than some hybrids.

Is it being a little too overblown to say this will be one of the last truly fantastic, back to basics sportscars powered by an internal combustion engine? Perhaps, but a few hours with a Caterham 170 will leave you prone to hyperbole. Exaggerations about the experience, marvels at how cramped you feel, everything is possible.

To say that this is the most cramped experience you’ll have in a car, but that you will not remember after a couple of minutes is one of the best ways to explain how good this little car is. The absolutely basic nature of a Caterham will never be for everyone, and at around £22,000 you could go off and look at something like a Ford Fiesta ST instead – or specced as ours was at £29k an i30N. But nothing gives a feeling quite like the 170, nothing makes you feel so conjoined to a car as this Caterham and so central to everything that happens. Let’s hope Caterham keep making magic like this for a few more years yet. This is probably the most fun you can have with your shoes off.