18 Facts About Caterham Cars

Caterham Cars is a British manufacturer of specialist lightweight sports cars established in Caterham, England, with their headquarters in Dartford, England.

On 2 April 2021, news was leaked that Caterham Cars was acquired outright on 31 March 2021 by VT Holdings, Japanese importer for the Caterham Seven since 2009.

Caterham Cars had been a major Lotus 7 dealer during the 1960s, and its founder, Graham Nearn, purchased the rights to continue manufacture of the Seven design from Chapman in 1973, after Lotus announced its intention to discontinue the model.

Caterham Cars initially restarted manufacture of the Lotus Seven Series 4; however, when this proved unpopular, production switched to a Series 3 model in 1974.

In 1974, under the name of Seven Cars Limited, Caterham built 20 production cars with chassis numbers 1 to 20 and one prototype, with chassis number 0.

Related searches

Since 2006 Caterham Cars has been run by an ex-Lotus management team led by Ansar Ali and Mark Edwards.

Subsequently, Caterham continued offering cars in 'complete knock down' kit form as the tradition of hand building your own Seven was well established amongst enthusiasts.

Today, all Caterham Cars Sevens are still offered in kit form in the UK except the CSR model.

International demand has increased dramatically in part due to the addition of a F1 Race team and the changes in Caterham Cars's structure focusing on the distribution of the Seven worldwide.

Caterham Cars has since introduced a new model line up and focused on their production and production times to better suit their new international market, making their partnership with Superformance possible.

Caterham Cars retained a Caterham South showroom and servicing facility in the town of Caterham adjacent to the railway station until February 2013.

The Caterham Cars dealership closed after the premises were sold for development and the showroom relocated to temporary facilities in Crawley.

In 2012 elements of Caterham Cars moved into a new facility in Leafield, Oxfordshire, where it is expected the new models of cars to be produced in the future will be developed and built.

In 2001, Caterham Cars designated MG Rover the sole engine supplier for factory-built Sevens, with Ford Zetec, Honda Fireblade, Yamaha R1 and Suzuki Hayabusa engines still available for kit assembly.

Caterham Cars Racing was used by the company to act as a feeder team towards developing racing drivers for the Caterham Cars F1 Team, until the company had to cease operations in both series.

Caterham Motorsport Ladder is a progression through the various Caterham Cars championships, starting with the Caterham Academy, and moving through ultimately to their most prestigious European events.

Since 2000, the popularity of the Academy has led to Caterham Cars providing two parallel Academy championships, each resulting in an Academy champion at the end of the year.

At the Autosport International 2012 Caterham Cars announced that it would be creating a karting series starting in 2013.