Some days you don’t want to be just a number anymore.

The Lotus / Caterham 7 is the fastest A to B car in the world.  Nine times out of ten a well-sorted 7 will get you to a destination a couple of hundred miles away even faster than a powerful motorcycle.  The only car that can come close to a 7 is a Porsche 911, but take one of those on an LA freeway and the gaps in traffic just aren’t big enough to make real progress ~ without you getting killed or caught.

A Lotus / Caterham Seven is SMALL.  You don’t turn the steering wheel, press the gas pedal, or reach down to change gear ~ you think the little car into gaps in traffic.  By the time you have had a conscious thought you are already a few hundred yards down the road.  A Seven is an extension of your mind, not an extension of your body ~ and for a guy a 7 is not an extension of your penis like a Porsche.

Both a Porsche and a well-sorted 7 will get you from rest to 60 miles and hour in a little under 4 seconds, but in any car other than a Seven you will need an open road, free of traffic, to make the most of that car’s savage acceleration.  In a Lotus / Caterham 7 you can just about ignore traffic ~ if you are brave enough, and if you are good enough.  And, you have no business sitting in the driver’s seat of a seven if you are not brave.

I don’t mean stupidly brave like motorcycle owners who are always just one tiny mistake from serious injury, or death.  Transplant surgeons love it when it rains, because they know there will be a motorcycle accident and they they will have some spare parts soon.

Brave in a Lotus / Caterham 7 means being who you truly are, embracing freedom, throwing away your ‘stand-in-line’ mentality, and becoming one with the moment.

Many women will not sit in the passenger seat of a Seven more than once.  They find the entire experience too visceral, too powerfully emotive, too fucking damn frightening.  Finding a girl to ride shotgun on a long road trip in a Seven isn’t an easy thing to do ~ but then what real man wants the first women they meet at a bar?  If you drive a Seven it’s going to take patience and time to find The Girl Riding Shotgun.

Anyway, if you are a real man you will have built your Seven yourself, and that takes time and patience too.  And if you drive hard, with the top down, (which is the only true way to drive a 7), then she can’t talk with you anyway~ it’s just too damn noisy.  The harsh bark of the side exhaust is overpowered by the flat roar from the Weber carburettors.  There is wind noise around the side-screens, tyre roar, and probably transmission whine.

There are some other things about a 7 most ordinary women don’t like.  It’s tiny, she’s sitting with her ass less than a foot from the road underneath, her hair is going to get blown about, every time you reach down to change gears you’re going to touch her leg, there’s limited luggage space, and when she gets out she’s got to be fucking damn careful not to burn her leg on the side exhaust, (if you’re driving a European spec car).

But real women, women who are not afraid of their own feelings will love a Caterham / Lotus 7.

Some say that they’re not a number, that they are a free man.  And, that they will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, numbered, and made to stand in line.  All I know is that of you drive a Seven you can do anything, as long as it’s what you want.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

Me and my Seven.