Caterham Super Seven 1600 SV 2020 UK first drive

With no power assistance for the steering, or indeed the brakes, you need to be prepared to put the effort in to get the rewards. But what rewards they are: the super-fast steering is continuously sending little messages about the road’s surface to your palms and tells you everything about the front tyres’ grip in corners. Few sports cars, in any class and at any price, are this talkative. 

Naturally, the Super Seven requires more effort than something like an Alpine A110. Its heavy steering makes low-speed manoeuvring a real chore, although it requires only a bearable amount of muscle at higher speeds. As for the brakes, they don’t require a great deal of pressure to slow the car in a normal fashion, but they need a hard squeeze before they really show what they’re capable of. 

Unlike the A110, Mazda MX-5 and pretty much every other new car, there’s no anti-lock braking system and no traction or stability control. Not that you should be too nervous: on a dry day at least, the tall, narrow tyres find a surprising amount of grip and need to be pushed hard before they relinquish it. Even when you do give the accelerator pedal a bit too much of a squeeze, slides are so well telegraphed and easily caught that they’re something to be enjoyed rather than feared. 

Unsurprisingly, there’s not much in the way of body lean, and although the suspension has little travel, it’s just about supple enough for battered British B-roads. With such a low weight, the Super Seven changes direction with an immediacy that’s almost impossible to find in other cars. 

As for refinement, it’s exactly as you’d expect it to be. Although you sit low, the wind whips around your head even with the optional side screens installed. Add the optional roof and you’ll still feel plenty of little breezes as air enters through gaps in the fabric, and there’s still tonnes of wind noise. You’ve also got the engine screaming away when you’re doing 70mph and a bit of tyre roar, too. In other words, buy earplugs and forget in-car conversations when you’re travelling at high speeds. An MX-5 is a much more relaxing long-distance companion.

As we’ve mentioned, you can have your Super Seven in a couple of different sizes. However, not even the larger, more practical SV variant tested here could be described as large or practical inside. For a start, you’ve got to manoeuvre yourself into the car, something that’s fairly straightforward with the roof off but nearly impossible with it on, unless you’re especially short.