Caterham

Coordinates: 51°16′49″N 0°04′54″W / 51.2803°N 0.0816°W / 51.2803; -0.0816

Caterham (/ˈkeɪtᵊrəm/) is a town in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. The town is administratively divided into two: Caterham on the Hill, and Caterham Valley, which includes the main town centre in the middle of a dry valley but rises to equal heights to the south. The town lies close to the A22, 21 miles (34 km) from Guildford and 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Croydon, in an upper valley cleft into the dip slope of the North Downs. Caterham on the Hill is above the valley to the west. Due to its proximity to London, Caterham is a commuter town, with small-to-medium sized businesses of its own but relatively few business/industrial parks. It has a significant area of retail and restaurants in Caterham Valley as well as pubs dotted throughout.

History

An encampment on the top of White Hill, in Caterham Valley south of Caterham School, between Bletchingley and the town centre is called The Cardinal's Cap which was excavated and inspected in designating it a Scheduled Ancient Monument. With close ramparts forming two or more lines, archaeologists describe the fort as a "large multivallate hillfort at War Coppice Camp".

Caterham 21

The Caterham 21 is a two-seat roadster designed and hand built by Caterham Cars in the 1990s. It was based on the mechanicals of the Caterham 7 and was intended to be a more practical version of that car with more conventional sports car styling.

The original car was produced for the 1994 British Motor Show to celebrate 21 years of Caterham Cars manufacture of the Lotus Seven. Styled by Iain Robertson and developed by a team under Jez Coates, the aim was to have a car that offered "the chance to experience Caterham motoring in a more practical format". The 21 was offered with a range of four-cylinder engines from 1.6 to 2.0 L, with 115 to 230 hp. Caterham originally intended to produce 200 cars per year, but fewer than 50 were actually made before production ceased. Several variations were created to participate in racing events.

The current owners run a regular gathering at a sprint track in the UK, with over 16 cars attending each year out of 48 produced.

Design and specification

Caterham 7

The Caterham 7 (or Caterham Seven) is a super-lightweight sports car produced by Caterham Cars in the United Kingdom. It is based on the Lotus Seven, a lightweight sports car sold in kit and factory-built form by Lotus Cars, from 1957 to 1972.

After Lotus ended production of the Lotus Seven, Caterham bought the rights to the design, and today make both kits and fully assembled cars. The modern Caterham Seven is based on the Series 3 Lotus Seven, though developed to the point that no part is the same as on the original Lotus.

Various other manufacturers offer a sports car in a similar basic configuration, but Caterham owns various legal rights to the Lotus Seven design and name. The company has taken legal action in the past in order to protect those rights, although in South Africa, it lost its case against Birkin on the basis that it never obtained the claimed rights from Lotus.

History

Colin Chapman had been a Royal Air Force pilot, studied structural engineering and went on to become one of the great innovators in motorsports design founded Lotus Engineering Ltd. His vision of light, powerful cars and performance suspensions guided much of his development work with the basic design philosophy of, "Simplify, then add lightness". His Lotus 7 had its debut at the 1957 Earl’s Court Motor Show in London. They were priced at £1,036 including purchase tax but it cost only £536 in kit form as no purchase tax was required. It weighed only 725 lb (329 kg). Fast and responsive, the Lotus 7 was one of Chapman’s masterworks, an advanced machine that surpassed the earlier Lotus 6 as a vehicle that could perform well on the track and be driven legally on the road.