What if you’ve had your fill of a Porsche 911 Turbo or Porsche 911 GT3? Maybe you’ve exhausted what you’re going to get out of it. Maybe you’ve tried slicks, tried upping the power, but it’s still not enough. You crave more.
How many people are there like that? “You’d be amazed,” says Caterham’s marketing man James Drake. Hence the creation of the car you see here, the new SP/300.R (from whose name, if you’ll excuse us, we might omit some punctuation).
If it isn’t hardcore enough for even a hardened track day veteran, I’ll eat my Nomex gloves. From its every pore oozes the vibe, sight and smell of race-car detailing.
Caterham has made the Super Caterham Seven since adopting it from Lotus nearly four decades ago. There’s not much more entertainment to be had on track than peddling a Supersport quickly.
But Sevens don’t translate everywhere. In Russia, the Middle East and the Far East, they understand track days and fast cars. They don’t (Japan excepted) understand Sevens. In short, if you’re Caterham, what do you do if you want to expand the portfolio? You ask Lola if they can help knock something up.
Et voila: Lola hands you back the SP300R, with an aluminium honeycomb passenger tub, a supercharged 2.0-litre Ford Duratec motor hung behind it and an F3-spec Hewland gearbox with paddleshifters.