The quickest-ever Caterham? That’s this one – nought to completion in just over a minute. Okay so some time-lapse video trickery has seen to that, but getting the iconic sportster from boxes of bits to running car in under five real hours still counts as mighty fast.
In fact it’s pretty certain it’s the fastest build of a Seven ever. It’s likely also to be the first car ever built on Regent Street…
A team of four engineers from Caterham Cars took on the very public challenge to turn kit into car in under five-and-a-half hours as one of the attractions at the recent Regent Street Motor Show in London. Our time-lapse video, all 1 minute 12 seconds of it, shows how they got on – in the event beating their target by 40 minutes. Caterham reckons it normally takes an owner between 80-100 hours to build their own Seven.
And all to beat the purchase tax! Well, that’s how the kit Seven (and Lotus 7 before it) first came about. When Colin Chapman launched the Lotus 7 at Earls Court 58 years ago the car cost £1,000 – but only half that as a kit of parts because there was no purchase tax payable on it.
If only the same thing applied to VAT today! Even so, with the Caterham 160 starting at £15,995 in kit form – including the VAT – it’s still bit of a bargain we reckon.
And if you want the factory to build yours? That’s another £3k – so by our reckoning the Caterham team were on £150 per hour each!
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