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Caterham Seven Lineup to Receive Three New Models in 2015

If you’re looking for a back to basics car that’s able to tickle your motoring purist expectations, you can’t go wrong with a Lotus 7. But Chapman’s embodiment of the Lotus philosophy was sadly scrapped in 1972.
Caterham Seven 160 1 photo
Photo: Caterham
With great fortune, Caterham Cars acquired the rights to make the Seven their own and did just that starting from 1973. Heck, Colin Champan’s Lotus Seven is popular even to this day despite the minor changes that came with the industry’s betterment.

The small and lightweight two-seat roadster is the bread and butter of Caterham Cars in every country the specialist manufacter has a dealership and it’s no wonder why. See the blue Seven with skinny tires above? That’s the new entry-level model from Caterham.

Despite the 660 cc engine and 80 bhp on tap, the pretty affordable £14,995 pricetag and 6.9-second 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) run make it a tough to resist proposition. The skinny rubber also gives it tail happy handling characteristics, something a Mazda MX-5 struggles with due to its low power-to-weight ratio.

The 160 in its name signals the roadster’s power-to-weight ratio

Knowing this, it’s not surprising what the top-of-the-range Seven 620 R boasts with: 310 bhp, 2.79 seconds to 60 mph and a £49,995 price. That’s a lot of performance for a machine this size, but the Caterham boys have plenty more to show.

Even though the British carmaker’s most highly-anticipated car of the near future is the road-going iteration of the AeroSeven Concept, Caterham told AutoCar that the Seven will spawn three new models next year. The three newbies will slot between the 160 and 620 R and will get numerical names too.

Caterham will offer every Seven model with two new performance packs dubbed R and S, with AutoCar noting that the S brings the most extreme performance to the Seven’s table. If our hunch is right, we're betting that the US-spec Caterham Seven 360 and 480 are two of the three upcoming models.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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