Lotus and Caterham Sevens: A Collectors Guide

Dust jacket notes: "However you define sports car - and that discussion, of course, is a perennial and probably never-ending one - there can be no doubt that the cars covered in this book, the Lotus Sevens and their successors from Caterham, represent one of the purest expressions of the idea ever offered for use on public roads. When the first Seven appeared in 1957, it was just about the simplest road-going car for the enthusiast driver that could be created around readily-available mass-production mechanical components. In size and in equipment it was pared to the bare minimum, with everything not essential omitted, to keep cost down, which was important, but also because nothing is as light as nothing and, power for power, low weight begets high performance. Subsequent development, a continuing if sporadic process over the intervening twenty-five years or so, has added a few items, but relatively only a few, to the list of standard fittings, and the basic concept of a totally functional, no-frills sports car - the nearest thing to a motorcycle on four wheels, it has often been called - remains in current production. The major changes have been the fitting of increasingly powerful engines to produce ever more dramatic performance. Not just straight-line performance either, for the Seven's handling and roadholding have always drawn superlative from its drivers, whether owners or road testers. In that respect it was a true child of its creator, Colin Chapman, its apparent simplicity belying the sophistication of the engineering behind the design. Only the accent on function and the Spartan, wind-in-the-hair driving environment were shared with sports cars of an earlier period: the ultra-light yet rigid spaceframe chassis and simple but carefully considered suspension marked the Seven as a product of a new, more technically advanced era...."