When one considers Caterham, “technology” is not the first thing that comes to mind. After all, barring its recent track-only collaboration with Lola, the company makes its bucks continually refining Colin Chapman’s venerable Lotus Seven. Admittedly, today’s Cat is a far cry from Chapman’s original, including such niceties as fuel injection and modern brakes, but let’s face it: A Seven isn’t—and thankfully will never be—a Bugatti Veyron.
Nevertheless, new owner Tony Fernandes, he of Team Lotus fame, is aiming to bring the company name to new markets via Caterham Technology and Innovation Limited. The aim is to develop a completely new line of lightweight sporting cars inspired by the Seven’s minimalist philosophy—in essence, we presume, out-Lotusing Lotus, which has suggested its new cars will be larger, heavier, more luxurious, and altogether Swizz Beatzier.
And rather than hiring say, Timbaland as Head of Road Cars, Fernandes is bringing aboard Tony Shute, a Lotus veteran who shepherded the Series 1 Elise to market. Shute is just the sort of bloke who might know a thing or two about constructing a Chapmanian sporting machine in this day and age.
Caterham claims the new division also will carry out contract work for other companies in the automotive and aerospace industries, drawing on Team Lotus’s and Fernandes’s Team AirAsia GP2 program’s technologies and materials. It sounds like a business model very similar to the one a certain concern in Hethel has operated under for years, almost as if Fernandes is starting a Lotus cover band. Hey Tony, if you’re taking requests, we’d really like to hear “Eclat” again.
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