Ordering

November 2019

This story starts shortly before a birthday that, whilst not divisible by 10, was at least divisible by 5. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the significance of that.

Owning a Caterham had been a long-held ambition. The process to buying one was a complete mystery. There is a configurator on their website that's lovely to use and makes the pricing really clear, but also presents a huge number of options with very little guidance as to what any of them do. Given that some of the options cost thousands, some in-person assistance was going to be needed.

The nearest showroom was Gatwick. Their advice was that they can get busy at the weekends and so, if you want attention, it's best to book ahead. That was my introduction to Euan-the-sales-person, who became my point-of-contact through to delivery.

Visit #1

The first choice is S3 vs SV. The S3 is approximately true to the original Lotus 7 dimensions, the SV is an acknowledgement that average human beings (or, at the very least, a big chunk of Caterham customers) are bigger now. Having quickly established that, for me, the SV merely required the co-pilot's cooperation to change gear, whereas for the S3 I'd probably need them to do it for me, that was the first decision made. Thinking back, I'm not sure that the distance between the doors on the S3 would have accommodated both sets of shoulders, so driving would have required constantly leaning out of the side, having first removed the doors from their hinges.

The next choice was engines. At this time, there were two capacities, 1.6l and 2.0l, both available in fresh-from-Ford or tweaked-by-Caterham, with the option of a supercharger bolted onto the tweaked-2.0l for the top-of-the-line 620R. The 620R's reputation precedes it as an overpowered track-day monster, but isn't available as a self-build so it crossed itself off my shortlist before I got there. The advice I received was that the 1.6 needed more RPM and more gear changes - fine for the track and great value in terms of price, but I was after an intercity street cruiser, so the 2.0 was the more sensible option. The tweaked-by-Caterham options have different parts rather than more expensive parts, so why anyone would opt for less power I'm not quite sure.

S3 vs SV. Longer, wider, heavier, but necessary.

That was sufficient in terms of decisions to narrow down on a budget price for the car. The lead time would be about 6 months, so there was some pressure to get to a firm order quickly if (as I did) I wanted to do the build next summer. Which then led to the topic of accommodation. There was a helpful outline on the floor of the showroom that illustrated that this was all possible within the footprint of a regular garage (I later found out that this was, if not a lie, perhaps an exaggeration for sales purposes). So, I guess I needed one of those as well then.

Budgets, timeframes and dependencies now clear, could then go off, do some more research, and sleep on things some more.

Visit #2

Being in sales myself, I sometimes get to appreciate the technique done well, whilst at the same time being (mostly) immune to its effects. Sometimes (this process being one of them) I'll deliberately dial-up my buying signals if it's already a done-deal and I want the salesperson's full attention. They have their dance, I have mine, and we both get what we want.

In this case, Euan had a client that he wanted to close and so he needed to create some urgency. So, he let me know that the price list was being revised at the beginning of December, and I needed to get an approximate spec agreed and a deposit paid in November if I wanted to lock in the existing pricing. That was fine, but meant that this visit was a long list of decisions. Some of these were aesthetic (choice of wheels has a small effect on performance, but mostly it's about style), some where about function ("Do I want adjustable dampers?" "They are only really for track, but they do make a difference." "Can I adjust them myself?" "You'd need a perfectly-flat floor, calibrated scales and a lot of patience. Really, it's something that our mechanics should do for you." "No, then?" "It's probably not necessary on a road car, and it's an easy swap later if you change your mind.") and some were about not understanding the terminology ("What's a tonneau cover?").

Over the course of an hour we did a couple of loops of their used car showroom looking for examples of Part X or Feature Y and, in the end, got to a 90% agreed specification that was sufficient to place an order and hand over a holding deposit to lock in the pricing.

Paint - Any colour you like
Stripe and nosecone - Three or four different options, then any colour you like
Wheels - Three options...
Front wishbones - Two options...
Front wheel arches - Two options...
Front lights - Two options...
Front light fittings - Two options...
Exhaust system - Two options...

That's just some of the options on some of the parts that are visible from this angle

I also took the opportunity of a test drive, the gist of which was that it's impossible to drive one and not grin the entire time. There's really no need to push them hard as the combination of no-weight and big-engine means that everything (starting, stopping, cornering, reaching the horizon...) happens quickly and without effort. Which was entirely the effect I was hoping for.

Visit #3

The remaining 10% were mostly aesthetic choices. What colour of paint (or bare aluminium, or carbon fibre) was a common theme across all of the external components; type of leather for the seats; that sort of thing. In the previous visit, Euan had taken things as far as he could in a single session. What was left were all intensely personal choices - things that I, as owner, would see every day but that, in terms of the mechanics, didn't change the performance or have a significant impact on the price. Sleeping on these some more was only sensible.

Euan had one more lever that he could pull to get me back into the showroom and so convert the holding deposit into a full deposit (which also had the effect of locking me in to paying the balance on a specific date in the future), that being that the spec needed to be final in order for my car to be released into the production queue. The lever duly pulled, I trotted back to complete the specification. This included another 30 minutes of exploration of the used car showroom to confirm a few details, but was a lot less intense than the previous session.

Things that were decided at this stage included the colour of the roll bar (toned to match the body rather than the default black), the type of dashboard (the 620 version rather than the default, because the switches are nicer) and so on.

That all done, and full deposit paid, Euan confirmed that it was likely that I'd get my kit sometime in April and I left, poorer but happier.

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