Caterham on the Project V sports car: “we don’t need to follow the numbers”

Caterham CEO Bob Laishley seems wary of the usual political juxtaposition, a man whose media training is the equivalent of saying – after telling you a juicy secret – “that’s probably off the record”. I really like Bob. He is a straight talker and a bad liar. But even he may have a bit of work to convince Caterham fans that a small electric car could be the future of the brand. Although it has been named Project V, it may not be as difficult as it sounds.

Mainly because the Project V – ‘V’ standing for voltage or speed – is a beautiful car in steel, with a wasp waist and three-bubble profile, strong shoulders and a simple rear end. There is a distinct lack of 21-inch rims, Lambo doors and leather made of otter nipples, just an elegant look and a muscular look. It is small, simple and the best for it.

The front has shades of Porsche, hints of a dead baby Caterham/Alpine C120, even a mid-nineties Caterham 21, the spirit of the Jannarelly Design 1. Although that’s no surprise, being Caterham’s chief designer indeed… Anthony Jannarelly . But once you’re up close and personal, this is a car that has character and balance, intent but not brash. It’s really rather good.

That being said, it’s quite a departure for the Seven, a car that eschews style by being reliably unfashionable, hasn’t changed much in style since 1958 when Lotus first released the car into the wild, even if the mechanical specs don’t share the same spot. and the elders of the stage. But where the Saba still has rotary wings, a roof tent and a heater that only burns your left knee, the Project V is a completely new ground for the company. It has a roof, for starters.

But that is only the beginning of this story. V is electric. Which makes 90 percent of sports car enthusiasts wince and deviate slightly, even if they appreciate the odds. But it is also light, which also makes those same people go back. Bob says that the idea behind Project V is to be “easy, light and fun to drive. And that is the core DNA of every Seven… and what Caterham is all about”. So how do you get from a simple Seven to Project V?

Bob again: “Firstly, Seven is not going anywhere, and we are committed to preparing them well for the next decade with an internal combustion engine – this car is to complement that, not to replace it. But we have to grow the company. And the car has to be compatible with modern life. In broad terms, that means something more versatile. So you get an aluminum chassis and a composite chassis clad in composite body panels, simple shapes and a weight that’s tailored wherever a piece can be carved.

Weight is really the key here. Caterham believes that with a 55kWh battery, roughly the same as the cells you’d find in the average family hatch, the Project V should come in at 1,190kg. That’s pretty good these days, unique to an electric car, and likely to get better over time as we pack more power into the same battery size. When you consider that a light ICE aircraft like the Alpine A110 weighs about 1,100 kg, you’re already a big passenger just off balance. And light weight begets efficiency – the less mass you can carry around means the brakes can be smaller, need less cooling, different crash protection. It’s the perfect circle that electric cars often square.

“Everything in the car has to defend itself from a weight point of view. We don’t have fruit – or stables, as I prefer to call it – and that saves 10-12 kg because we don’t have seals, hinges, latches or the tray itself. The space that opens gives us the space to do what we need to do with crash design and suspension placement,” says Bob. “We don’t have an embedded infotainment system (just mirroring the phone), and that means we don’t have a double DIN somewhere in the car that takes up space and weight. These things don’t sound like much, but when you start doing it everywhere…”

But real-time thinking doesn’t stop there. You can build an electric car, especially a concept, that can crush physics like a snooker ball in a sock. But the Project V isn’t aiming for 1,000bhp, a sub-2.0secs 0–62mph time or a 250mph top speed. There is a single motor mounted near the rear axle, producing an average 268bhp. That puts performance on par – again – with something like the Alpine A110, so 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds and over 140mph. A lot of getting into trouble, it’s not enough to have to redesign the car to be able to cope with theoretical use on a large scale. And leave the headlines for more difficult variants in the future.

“The performance of this is like one of the 420S Sevens, we don’t need to look for numbers – that’s old. We’re more about the power performance of the car. This car is not aimed at a track day, but if it ended up at one, you don’t use 0–60. You can’t use it in the pits, you’re more interested in performance around the corners and that’s what we want to offer with this,” says Bob, carefully reversing the conventional perception of an electric car as being good at acceleration, but a bit numb. around the bends.

So Project V seems to have taken a long time to look at what it means to be an electric drive car, and then make adjustments within the parameters of a powertrain. The suspension is fully adjustable so you can adjust the V to your preferred handling characteristics.

Most EVs ride high because the battery pack is usually placed under the floor. Good for weight distribution and center of gravity, bad for the driver, who tends to feel like he’s riding, rather than in. Caterham’s solution is a split battery pack, with 50 percent packed under your feet and the rest enclosed. under the back bench. That means your bottom and hips can be dropped down into the seat, meaning you feel like you’re being pushed into the Project V instead of sitting. It also means that the roofline can be lower, a slimmer silhouette.

The inside is as entertaining as the outside. The dash is simple, clean and understated. There’s a T-shaped center console that sprawls across, and an admirable lack of exterior functionality. The materials and quality look good, even on what is ‘just a concept’. Yes, there’s an Apple CarPlay and Android Auto touchscreen for phone mirroring, but it’s placed low in the middle of the dashboard, above a set of toggle switches for things like windows and driving modes (Normal, Sport and Orientation). Maybe by making the usual adjustments to the sky and the relief maps.

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The wheel is small – very Caterham – and forms a pair of digital gauges in analogue fashion, which engages well in your field of vision. But the most interesting is that the position of you in the car. The doors open wide enough, but you sit with your legs slightly up and your bum bent back. It’s more compact, and as intended, much lower than usual in an EV. That’s good for connection and response, kind of leading you to feel from your hips rather than something more obvious than, say, steering feel.

It’s roomy too, with enough headroom for those over 6ft, and a rear bench (which houses half the battery) that could theoretically accommodate a rear seat, a single seat or a pair of rear jump seats. , designed as a pad on the large part of the head. The Project V concept has a single rear seat, centered, which looks good, but anyone over 10 will struggle to get in or out. Or really, live longer. But it is a practical space that can swallow several small jackets no problem if you need more than boots.

As for other performance features, the battery has a cooling/heating function, which means a range of 249 miles, as well as 150kW of internal DC charging, which should provide a 20-80 percent charge in just 15 minutes. adding less charge. 150 incentive miles. So much for many Caterham type events. Which makes it all feel very… true, for what is supposed to be a concept car.

But as it turns out, there has been a feasibility study and engineering cost analysis on Project V, so it’s not as conceptual as you might think for a launch in ’25 or early 2026. “We’re a small company with limited resources – we don’t have the ability to make a car la show, then we threw it in the bin six months later and started doing the real engineering, so we started with the real engineering and the car was built by ItalDesign – because they are part of the big OEMs. … we had access to all their tools. So this thing is wrapped and painted the way we wanted.

As for the cost, the estimated price of around £80k is certainly not cheap for a Caterham, but for a top baby car it seems a good price. Obviously Porsche will be in the frame with the upcoming electric Boxster/Cayman, but you get the feeling that, like the Seven, there may be a market for those who drive at the tip of their emotional spear, even if the power is there. electricity.

And that’s the real story here: Caterham is a smart, small company with low standards. It can make quick decisions, bring the car back to core values, combine the pieces to create a car that can hit its weight and performance goals. A company that is clear in what it needs to produce in a world where the basic bricks have changed into something completely different.

Simple, light and fun to drive. That is the basic DNA… What we are about

If Caterham can keep the Project V on target in terms of weight and price, putting the driving experience front and centre, there’s no reason this can’t be mainstream. It may not be a game changer and the number it talks about, but it could be a landmark.

And next time? Well, when asked if Caterham was likely to expand (as Lotus did) into the luxury saloon and SUV sectors, Bob simply said: “Long time no see. But I didn’t realize you’d be so funny all of a sudden…” You get the feeling that Caterham, with all its quirks, is probably in safe hands. And Project V suddenly doesn’t feel quite as achievable.