Quick Caterham shot:
It was a 1.6 Superlight (Evo did a big Caterham shootout from across the years and the Superlight and the mad JPE were their favourites - I was very pleased when that mag came out a month after I picked this up). The Superlight had a tuned 1.6 K-series and mine was optimised by DVA to get it 'just so'. 140ish BHP, 500kg, carbon nose, wings, dash, 6-speed, LSD, etc. The Superlight pre-dates the R300 / R400 / R500, but set the mould for those. In that sense , you would call mine an R280... But the reality is that the R300s never made their quoted BHP unless they were set-up by someone over than Caterham, so I had fun beating them over a lap!
Adequate straight line performance, but over a lap it was phenomenal - sky high cornering speeds, very late braking and you really had to master the braking / cornering to get the lap times. Couldn't be lazy! I didn't have to sell it when I moved house, but was just too busy to use it and the £15k looked tempting. Cost me naff all in running costs and depreciation over 2 years. Glad in owned one, but if I went that route again I'd either go budget and build my own Westfield or look at Radicals, Atoms and the like. A lot of Caterham guys just go for faster Caterhams... But there is more to life IMO. Especially as I'm not a Caterham fan-boy, it was just the best track toy I could afford at the time. I was also single and could do 7-8 track days a year back then! Love to have the time to do that now!