Caterham Seven 620S interior

Like many features of the Caterham experience, the car’s petite and broadly rudimentary cabin tendsto provoke a love/hate response. Quiet, spacious and comfortable it is not.

The finish has improved recently, but no one would wager their pension scheme on the dials not falling out during the oil’s first lifecycle.

Think hard about the colour, because if you're not keen on polishing the 620S then opt for a bright colour that won’t lose its lustre

Nic Cackett

Road tester

Nevertheless, it is a place of singular purpose and conviction. There are two seats, a steering wheel, a gearknob, a handbrake, a bank of purely functional toggles and a heater. That’s it, and that’s the way its customer base tends to like it.

The Caterham Seven is for indulging your pleasure of driving, not your contemporary notion of convenience.

However, whereas the standard 620R took this ethos to a track-focused extreme, the S walks the notion back a little. It shares the carbonfibre dashboard layout – Caterham’s most expensive, and best, configuration of dials and buttons – but changes much else.

Although our test car came with heated buckets (an exceptionally brilliant, if pricey, innovation) the standard model does not but instead swaps the R’s no-compromise seating for a more normal padded leather affair. With them goes the eyeball-threatening aero screen, replaced by the welcome sight of a proper, heated windscreen.