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Caterham Seven 160 review: The Raspberry Pi of motoring

Back to driving's basics with a joyously legal high

Paltry power? Pah - it's a perfect performer

Paltry power figures simply don’t matter. It’ll still do 0-60 in a shade over six seconds and go fast enough to make you back off. The power band is quite narrow, and a bit more torque lower down would make it more drivable. You need it up above 4,000 rpm, with power peaking at 7,000rpm. There isn’t a red line but if there was it would be at 7,700rpm.

Caterham Seven 160 dashboard. Credit: Gordon Laing, cameralabs.com

Spartan: Spot the rev counter - no red lines here

The gap between second and third is a bit wide so you need to keep it screaming, particularly when changing down as the gearbox isn’t great. It needs a blip of the throttle to get gears to slot in. But you'll learn. Always being in the right gear isn’t about matching socks.

When I picked up the Seven 160 I was asked if I’d driven one before. When I said I had, but not for twenty years – I now realise that as I was at Milbrook with Motor magazine it must have been more like 30 – I was told that this would feel familiar. It has a live rear axle and drum brakes. The more expensive Sevens now have discs all round and De Dion suspension. But you know what? It doesn’t matter.

With so little mass those components work plenty well enough, perhaps the ride over rough surfaces could be better but a lot of the attraction is not feeling isolated. Some small cars feel racing car like alive and shimmy with the throb of the engine and jerk of the clutch. The 160 doesn’t do that but it’s still more like something you wear than sit in.

Caterham Seven 160 on the ground. Credit: Gordon Laing, cameralabs.com

Low: With that little room, no wonder it's bumpy over humps

The small engine and dimensions should make it eligible as a Japanese Kei class car, and Japan is Caterham’s second largest export market after France. However, the Japanese claim that Kei is not for open-top two-seater sports cars and is all about being practical. Perhaps they need to look at the Honda Beat, Suzuki Cappuccino and Autozam AZ1 and rethink their idea of “practical”.

When people say “I wouldn’t have a sports car, I’d lose my licence”, they should try one of these. It’s more fun at legal speeds than a Porsche is at a rate of knots which would have one-time North Wales Police Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom locking you up and throwing away the key. Caterham say it will get up to 100mph, but there is some lift at the front when you are pressing on so I wasn’t minded to find out.

The result is that you smile. A lot. Even in the shitty stop-start A406 traffic, you smile. And people smile at you, from middle-management men in Mercedes to yummy mummies pushing buggies. I drove it through central London at midnight, in traffic and in rain and still loved it – although I did wimp out and put the roof up eventually. It’s got more street cred than Russell Brand, and is the only car where my teenage sons have asked to be taken to school so they can be seen in it.

It doesn’t evoke the bitterness of a 4x4 or a similar status symbol.

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