Cars we love to drive: Caterham Seven CSR Twenty

What is the Caterham experience? 

I’ve had many a discussion with colleagues about the Caterham. Despite the widely held opinion that it’s virtually unparalleled when it comes to driver enjoyment, it would seem it appeals to a surprisingly small demographic. 

It’s true, as I’ve got older and my taste has matured, I’ve tended towards ride quality and class — I can no longer tolerate the savage treatment of a Civic Type R. But there’s something different about a Caterham. 

There’s a time and a place for embracing a more forthright driving experience, and for me that’s any time I’m climbing into a Caterham Seven. Lowering yourself into the cocoon-like driver’s seat is a novelty, but it hasn’t worn off for me yet. It’s a special occasion; you build up to it like a child looking forward to a birthday party. 

It's a car that people love to see out and about. There's nothing else like it on modern public roads, and you get a sense when you're behind the wheel that you're making everyone else's day too, not just your own.

That's all fundamentally down to the way the Caterham looks. It remains every bit the 1950s sportscar that Colin Chapman conceived during those earliest days of Lotus, and that in itself makes the Seven unique.

There's nothing I don't like about the Caterham's look. It's racing car, built for the purpose of thrilling anyone who gets behind the wheel.

What’s a Caterham like to sit in? 

Once you're in, you’re immediately hit by the compact pedal box and the tiny Momo steering wheel. It feels like a toy, and exactly like a toy the Caterham is something you just want to play with.

Then there’s the dashboard, finished with carbon fibre in the CSR Twenty, which remains pretty much unchanged since the earliest days of the Seven. Analogue dials are flanked by chrome switches for things like the indicators, headlights and horn.  

The transmission tunnel is upholstered in leather, complemented by a Alcantara gaiters for the gearstick and handbrake.

The Seven range is generally available in two sizes, standard or large, but the limited CSR Twenty has been produced only with the larger ‘SV’ chassis. It’s 250mm longer, 110mm wider and 25mm taller than the standard chassis, and that makes a noticeable difference to how much space you get inside. In the larger chassis you get decent leg and elbow room, but it still feels like you’re sat in a compact and inherently nimble machine.

The CSR Twenty comes with figure hugging bucket seats finished in leather, and they offer the perfect middle ground in the Caterham range.  

The carbon race seats you get in R-spec Sevens are great for track use, but a little rough around the edges for the day-to-day. Then you have the leather comfort seats of the S models, which don’t provide the kind of support you need in a car like this. For regular use, the softer leather seats are my preference, but the CSR Twenty is close to perfect in this regard. 

The four-point harness is perhaps an inconvenience too far for the everyday. It certainly magnifies the racing car feel, but you’re already getting an abundance thrills by simply driving the car on the road.  

Strapping yourself in every time you want to pop to the shops is a little faffy. The standard seatbelt setup is far more convenient, and undoubtedly the most normal thing about driving a Seven on the road. 

Those harnesses do of course have a genuine use if you’re planning to put the car through its paces on a racetrack, and maybe I’m just in the minority for wanting to drive a Caterham all the time. 

What’s it like to drive a Caterham Seven CSR Twenty? 

Turn the key, press the ignition switch and you’re met with a spirited rumble from the 2.0-litre Ford Duratec engine. It reverberates through the steel spaceframe chassis to bring the whole car to life and heighten your senses, and you release the handbrake and drop the wonderfully weighed clutch for the first time. 

Put your foot down and the rumble turns to a shout. I struggle to put my finger on whether it’s a pleasant noise or not, the epicentre of the harangue is a handful of inches from your ear thanks to the sizeable exhaust that juts underneath your right elbow.  

There’s no real depth to it, it’s just loud, and angry, but regardless of the quality of the sound, it is absolutely guaranteed to paint a big old grin on the face of you and your lucky passenger should you have one. 

That 2.0-litre engine needs no additional motivation to soar through the revs, and you’ll find yourself flicking through the spectacular five-speed gearbox to keep up. The Caterham encourages you to drive with vigour, and it’s perfect, because that’s exactly how you get the best out of these cars. 

Oftentimes, the only thing that helps a car inject some excitement into the drive is a hefty dose of power and torque. The CSR Twenty offers up 213PS (157kW) and 203Nm (150lb ft), giving an all-important power-to-weight ratio of 345PS (254kW) per tonne. The results are pretty astonishing whenever you request some extra horses, but in the case of the Caterham that is a very short chapter in the story. 

With time you start to get a feel for the pedals, the driving position is wonderfully intuitive, and I found my gearshifts were getting sharper and sharper every time I got in for a drive. That’s good, because it means you can better exploit the Seven’s remarkable lightness when you arrive at a corner. 

Heel and toe is an absolute doddle in the CSR Twenty, and while it’s hardly necessary when you’re out on a typical drive on public roads, the potential to properly stretch the little Caterham’s legs on your favourite B-road is simply too much to ignore. 

The CSR Twenty weighs only 620kg, the chassis is super stiff and the suspension is engineered to a fault, inboard at the front and fully independent at the rear. The result is a balance that pretty much lets you do, and get away with, whatever you want.  

Chuck it in at high speed and it’ll stick. Seek to unsettle the rear axle and it will obey. Because the controls are so slick, so connected and so easy to handle, the feeling of control is difficult to comprehend. 

You feel absolutely everything that’s going on, whether it’s through the seat, or through the tiny ten-inch Momo steering wheel, and that means that even if something does catch you by surprise, you can hold an awful lot of confidence in reserve that you’ll be able to sort it out. 

That’s not to say it’s all easy work, driving a Caterham, particularly speed, can be a physical activity. There’s no power steering, which most importantly magnified that feeling of control, but it does get heavy at slower speeds.  

The brakes, too, require a decent amount of time to understand. Jumping from your standard road car into a CSR Twenty with its bright red calipers and big ventilated disks is quite the departure.  

They’re powerful enough, especially when all they have to do is stop a small 620kg car, but you do have to be on the ball when it comes to pressing on the pedal. It’s closer to the feeling you get from a single-seater racing car than a road car. 

Why do we love the Caterham Seven? 

If I haven’t already got my point across, it’s simple. There is no other car in the world that I connect with quite like the Caterham Seven. 

It’s unique, and while its uncompromising nature doesn’t endear itself to everyone, it has absolutely captured my heart. For someone who simply loves driving, the Caterham turns every single journey into an end-to-end source of entertainment. 

We all have a tendency to take life a little too seriously from time to time, but this car is the perfect reminder to stop and take a minute to enjoy the simpler things.  

Granted, the privilege of having regular and unrestricted access to the CSR Twenty will set you back at least £79,995, and that is an awful lot of money if you think that this is a car that does without many of the features we take for granted these days.

But that’s the very highest and exclusive end of the scale. When you consider the attention to detail, time and effort that goes into developing a car like this, not to mention the richness of the end result, the price tag suddenly seems a little fairer.  

You can of course get yourself onto the Caterham ladder for less than £30,000 with the Seven 170, a car that, in its own way, would be equally deserving of every single plaudit I’ve thrown at the CSR Twenty. 

Ultimately, the Caterham is a car that fits perfectly with the ethos that we so enjoy here at Goodwood, and that is perhaps the reason why it sits somewhere near the very top of the cars we love to drive. 

Photography by Joe Harding.