The shower in our room was really interesting. There was an auxiliary heater hung outside of the bathroom in the bedroom. The adjustment for the heat was in the bedroom. Initially, the setting was too cold, so I got a cold shower. Rich turned the setting up and came out as red as a cooked lobster (a pretty meaty one at that!)
We wanted to get our pictures in front of Brands hatch race track so we headed over there before our Caterham tour. It turned out that the track was open with a few sports racers and rental cars buzzing around for some sort of press day. The guard let us in to the outer paddock so we were able to check out the track from the grandstands. Very nice view, as you could see about 4 turns from the top of the grandstand. You could just picture in your head the old Lotus Formula 1 cars blasting around the track back in the 60's and 70's. Pretty cool. On to Caterham in Kent, because the Caterham in Caterham is the dealer and the factory is in Kent. Got it? Looked like an average industrial area when we had buzzed through the night before. During the day however, there were about 20 little Caterhams parked out front. The workers cars. One even had numbers on the side like it was a weekend warrior doing battle on the racetrack.
The factory was fairly small. They do a lot of outsourcing so they don't have to worry about layoffs if business sours. The aluminum comes in pre-cut and pre-bent. The Fiberglass comes in pre painted. The colours are all chosen by the customer, so each car has a build sheet. What engine do you want - Rover or Kent? Colours? Stripes? Seats? DeDion independent or solid axle rear end? Clam shell or cycle front fenders? Fiberglass or carbon fiber? Some people even order painted carbon fiber but leave the front 2 inches of the fenders unpainted so everyone can "SEE" that those fenders are carbon fiber! Quite a few options for such a little car.
Even the kits are somewhat assembled. They put some of the stuff on the tub including the skins, electrics, rear end and brake lines. Smart move. I could imagine some liability issues if some rube flared his brake lines with a Phillips screwdriver (yes I've tried it), took the car out on it's first ride, crashed it and broke all of his three teeth! By partially assembling the important bits, they retain a degree of safety, and get around the regulations for frilly assembled cars.
Seemed like everyone was busy. A lot of "younger" guys putting the toys together. Looks like fun! The body pieces come in already painted. The chassis come in all together and painted. The engines are pre-assembled. Only some assembly required. Just like you or I would do in the garage, they do in the factory. The difference is that we would have to read the directions and scratch our head a lot. These boys could do this with their eyes closed.
Lots of beautiful cars with beautiful paint. There was even a batch of 6 being prepared for a Japanese buyer that were all aluminum, fenders and all.
Lots of waste being tossed out. Apparently it was cheaper to buy whole assembled engines, pull off the parts they don't want and replace them with higher performance bits. The unwanted stuff, all brand new and still good, just went in the trash! Flywheels, Oil pans, intake manifolds, and various bits all in the trash. What a
waste!
In the service department were about 10 customer cars in various stages of repair. There was one 7 that had been in a big crunch. The bonnet was off and you could see the Cosworth twin cam engine had been damaged. The cam sprockets had punched a hole in the head from the obviously substantial impact. Ouch! That wallet definitely has to come out on that repair. Our tour guide noted that insurance on sevens is fairly cheap in England. A 20 year old employee of Caterham for example had full coverage for about £350 a year. The thought is that the Caterham owners take care of their cars and have fewer claims. Insurance for a normal car was about £500-600 a year. I understand that the biggest insurance concern in England is theft, whereas in the States, it's lawsuits.
The tour was great, but the best part was yet to come. One of the employees (Len) races his Caterham on weekends. He has a Superlight model with the close ratio 6 speed transmission. And he had the best job at Caterham. Besides his normal duties, he takes prospective customers out on joy rides. Oh joy, here we go. His car was modified with sticky Yokohama A032 tires and stiffer springs. The fuel injected Kent motor was dynoed at 138 HP. Our joy ride was to take place right there in the industrial area of Kent. Each of us took turns going out for about a 2 mile run. Len left the side windows on the car to cut down on some of the wind. I squeezed into the cockpit and buckled up the 6 point racing harness. Engine fires up smartly and the clutch seems to be easy to modulate. Len drove gently down the industrial drive and waited for traffic to clear to let us out to a main road. Once he had about 3 inches of room in between traffic, he jumped out and got on it. Ooo-wee! Lots-o-acceleration, even with the overweight passenger hanging on tight. We blasted down the road a bit while Len tried to shout out some highlights about the car. I couldn't hear much but was having a gas anyway. We buzzed through the first very busy round about at a reasonable pace. As we approached the second one however, Len showed me the advantage of a 6-speed, close ratio trans. We were cruising at about 70 in 6th. As he shouted out the gears as he down shifted from 6th, to 5th, to 4th, to 3rd, to 2nd, to 1st. All the time the engine was buzzing-buzzing-blaring-screaming! As he reached first, he stood on it big time and ran back up the gears quite vigorously. We approached the round-about winding 3rd pretty good and I glanced at the speedo - 85 mph! Oh-boy! Len and I glanced to the left and right and the coast was clear. He sailed right on through the intersection with just a little flick of the wheel at 85 and got on it just as he hit the apex. About 50 yards beyond the round-about he started slowing back down and I noted the speedo was at 105! I don't know what the top end would have been, but I didn't need to find out. 105 in a car you can almost wear is way cool! We cruised on back to the factory and Len took Mark, Paul, Jack and Rich out for their turns. Yes, Rich did fit in the passenger seat. He even took the video camera and tried to tape the run but alas, the battery went dead just before his turn through the quick round-about (the battery probably had a heart attack!). Oh-well, we can all replay it in our heads forever!
We thanked the factory folks and headed back towards Heathrow. On the way back, Rich decided to stop for gas at the town of Caterham and we got two lucky breaks. At a stop light I spotted a camera shop and jumped out to get a battery for my camera. Rich made a left to come around the block to pick me up and discovered the Caterham dealer! Wow, park the van, lets check it out!
There were 4 very pristine used Caterhams on the outside lot. Inside there were 3 other very nice examples. Although each of them were basically Caterham sevens, they all looked quite different with all different color schemes and options. We milled about drooling over the fine examples when the receptionist (no salesmen in sight) mentioned that there were quite a few more in the back. Were there ever! Probably about 15 used Caterhams, 3-4 Lotus Sevens and 2 sixes! There was also a few customer cars being worked on by the mechanics. Again, all in the open with no salesmen hanging over our shoulders. We sat in the ones we liked as Paul and Rich took pictures of the Sixes for future reference on their Mark 6 restoration project.
