The Caterham sports car is my favourite sports car. Specifically the Caterham 21, a two-seater is a sports car to remember. Caterhams are constructed with aluminium and feature powerful lightweight engines, too. These facilitate high performance and coupled with other safety features make this car ideal for track races. An interesting feature of Caterham is that cars are offered in CKD (completely knocked down) condition !
The Caterham 21 has a wrap=around windscreen and a convertible top apart from it being light in weight. This car, however, did not sell as high as was expected. One of the reasons being that the prototypes were provided to customers for trials. While the trials were in progress, many months passed and there were many who cancelled their bookings of the Caterham 21. This car comes in the 1.6 to 2.0 L bracket and was so named to celebrate 21 years of the Caterham cars ! The latest Caterham 21 manufactured in the Michigan, is fitted with a powerful RST-V8 engine. A variation of this car was unsuccessfully tried in the larger segment of cars when it was fitted with a more powerful engine. The gear box in these cars is either the sportier 6 speed or the standard Caterham 5 speed gear box. The Caterham 21 was able to rekindle the British appeal for sports cars. The production of this car was intended to be around 200 per year but only 48 were ever made !
The Caterham 21 was built using existing car parts. For instance, the headlights were from Suzuki, tail lights from Ford Mondeo, the steering column from a Vauxhall and door handles from a Opel !! The seats are of leather and the overall car is austre in terms of amenities. All this to make it light weight. The engines, too were from Vauxhall and the Rover K- series. The Caterham 21 comes in a variety of colours like blue, white, yellow and black. They can reach a top speed of 147 mph, and 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds !
The car is 41 inches in height and 149 inches in length. The width is 62 inches. With a weight of 1433 pounds and a fuel tank capacity of 14.5 gallons, this car is ideal for sports. It is priced at around 12,000 pounds. I would recommend this car for those who would like to take their girlfriend for a long drive !
