Photo: Caterham
Nowadays, a hot hatch with 263 hp is a machine capable of delivering a pretty spicy range of feelings and emotions. Imagine the same muscle motivating a Caterham that weighs a little over 500 kg (1,100 lbs) and you end up with the company’s Superlight R500. The vehicle, which is one of the fastest and most extreme vehicles to have received a Caterham badge, has now seen its order books closed.
The final unit of the extreme Seven sportscar, number 174, was assembled yesterday at Caterham’s Dartford plant, being headed for the automaker’s Peru distributor - you can see this exact vehicle above. To get an idea of just how fast this Seven is, we’ll mention the creature can hit 60 mph from a standing start in a blistering 2.88 seconds.
“What about the track?” we hear you asking. Well, Caterham’s Superlight R500 managed to lap Top Gear’s test track half a second quicker than the Bugatti Veyron. Sure, we’re dealing with apples and oranges here, but you get the point.
As you can imagine, this also brought an extreme character, but the matter didn’t keep the creature from becoming one of Caterham’s most popular models ever. The Superlight R500 was also a hit past the British borders, with about half of the aforementioned production run finding owners from outside the UK. Its most important export markets were Japan and Italy, followed by France and then Germany.
“It was a landmark model for us in many respects; its performance on the road and track was matched by the impact it had on our brand. It brought new technologies to the Seven range and was the first production Caterham to adopt a sequential gearbox,” Caterham Group CEO, Graham Macdonald, said.
If you just can’t stand not having fed the R500 some tarmac, there’s still hope. You’ll be able to find this in multiple computer games. Have fun!
“What about the track?” we hear you asking. Well, Caterham’s Superlight R500 managed to lap Top Gear’s test track half a second quicker than the Bugatti Veyron. Sure, we’re dealing with apples and oranges here, but you get the point.
As you can imagine, this also brought an extreme character, but the matter didn’t keep the creature from becoming one of Caterham’s most popular models ever. The Superlight R500 was also a hit past the British borders, with about half of the aforementioned production run finding owners from outside the UK. Its most important export markets were Japan and Italy, followed by France and then Germany.
“It was a landmark model for us in many respects; its performance on the road and track was matched by the impact it had on our brand. It brought new technologies to the Seven range and was the first production Caterham to adopt a sequential gearbox,” Caterham Group CEO, Graham Macdonald, said.
If you just can’t stand not having fed the R500 some tarmac, there’s still hope. You’ll be able to find this in multiple computer games. Have fun!
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