My history with the class and other cars

I'm now building a clubman (more on that later), but I have had one in the past. I used to live in the UK, and when I was in Leeds (and therefore close to the Pennines, the Yorkshire Moors, and hundreds of twisty roads) I thought about getting a little sports car to run around in.

Personally, I like small cars. I like going fast, sure, but I really like acelleration and cornering. Top line speed in a clubman is never good - ancient design means a poor cd (co-efficient of drag). Basically they're a brick at speed and hit a wall at around 180kph. Later designs are getting better, but it's still the same concept.

So that ruled out all the usual "big" car options - my two choices at the time were a Lotus Elise and a Caterham.

Long story short - basically everyone had a Lotus, and few people had a Caterham. Plus, the Caterham had everything the Elise had and more, in my opinion, plus it just looked amazing. The classic lines of an older sports car (I love MGBs and Triumph Spitfires, by the way) with the handling, accelleration, braking and overall performance of a modern car.

So the Caterham is was. The basic spec for the car was:

• Caterham SuperSport


• 1.6 litre K-Series engine uprated to 145bhp


• Six-speed gearbox


• LSD


• Anti-cavitation tank


• Uprated front brakes


• Built in fire extinguisher (for scaring passengers)


• All weather gear (it's the UK!)

And it was pretty damn fast - 0-60mph in about 6.2 seconds in a motorised tea-tray. Enough to get me going, anyway.

Over my year's ownership, never missed a beat, apart from once when the alternator cooked the battery (leading to plumes of acid vapour pouring out of the bonnet - very dramatic), and once when I hit a patch of mud on a back country road and understeered into a bank.

Oh, and once coming around a corner on a one-way lane and meeting a tractor with a forklift attachment coming the other way. Very exciting.....

But really, it was a year of just driving somewhere for the hell of it. Downsides were based on where I had to keep the car - I was living in the centre of Leeds, so I left it at my clients factory. Every time I wanted a drive, I had to walk 15 minutes, go through the gates, take the cover off the car (it was outside....), change shoes, put the steering wheel on, take the roof off, then drive out. It would take 30 minutes from start to finish, which really does take the edge off.

I've made damn sure that I now have a place which is undercover and within seconds of my front door for the new one.....

I've also owned a few other fun cars - from a Mitsubishi Cordia (that blew up), to a Suzuki Swift GTi (that travelled with me to the UK and was sold to a Kiwi who was going to race it), to a Porsche 964 /911 Carrera 4 in Dubai that was a hell of a lot of fun but damn expensive to maintain.