2004 Caterham 7 1796cc petrol en-route to Capesthorne Hall classic May car show, Cheshire, UK
The modern Caterham Seven is based on the Series 3 Lotus Seven, though developed to the point that no part is the same as on the original Lotus. Various other manufacturers offer a sports car in a similar basic configuration, but Caterham owns various legal rights to the Lotus Seven design and name. The company has taken legal action in the past in order to protect those rights, although in South Africa, it lost its case against Birkin on the basis that it never obtained the claimed rights from Lotus.[2] History Colin Chapman had been a Royal Air Force pilot, studied structural engineering, and went on to become one of the great innovators in motorsports design and found Lotus Engineering Ltd. His vision of light, powerful cars and performance suspensions guided much of his development work with the basic design philosophy of, "Simplify, then add lightness".[3] His Lotus 7 had its debut at the 1957 Earl's Court Motor Show in London. They were priced at £1,036 including purchase tax but it cost only £536 in kit form as no purchase tax was required. It weighed only 725 lb (329 kg). Fast and responsive, the Lotus 7 was one of Chapman's masterworks, an advanced machine that surpassed the earlier Lotus 6 as a vehicle that could perform well on the track and be driven legally on the road. In 1973, Lotus decided to shed its kit car image and concentrate on limited series motor racing cars and up-market sports cars. As part of this plan, it sold the rights to the Seven to its only remaining agents, Caterham Cars in England and Steel Brothers Limited in New Zealand. At the time the current production car was the Series 4, but when Caterham ran out of the Lotus Series 4 kits in 1974 they introduced its own version of the Series 3, as the Caterham Seven. The modern-day Road sports and Superlights (in "narrow-bodied chassis" form) are the direct descendants of this car and therefore of the original Lotus 7.
Size: 3350px × 2233px
Location: Congelton, UK
Photo credit: © ZarkePix / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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