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The Caterham Seven is a classic British sports car.  It is based around the original design of the Lotus Seven, which ended production many years ago.  Caterham have made modifications to the design over the years, but it remains closely related to the original Lotus design.

Colin Chapman, the late founder of Lotus Cars, believed stongly in the principle of keeping his cars as light and as simple as possible.  The Seven is perhaps the most extreme interpretation of this concept.  Few cars in recent years have come close to the lightness of the Seven, with the main exception being Lotus' own Elise.  This car uses much more modern technology, such as a bonded aluminium chassis, to achieve similar goals to the Seven.

The Caterham 7 lends itself very well to being modelled in Lego.  The minimal bodywork reduces problems with excess weight, and the simple styling of the body can be more easily expressed in Lego than more modern, organic shapes.

However, certain features do cause problems for the Lego replica.  Principle amongst these are the curved, protruding wheel arches.  Whilst the rear wheel arches are attached to the rest of the rear body work, the front mud guards move with the front wheels.  In other words, they follow both the steering and suspension movements of the front wheels.

I was greatly assisted in the construction of the model by my two recent Lego purchases, my first new Lego models in around ten years.  These are the 8448 Super Street Sensation and 8480 Space Shuttle, which provided me with copious quantities of angle beams and new connectors.  Using these new parts within one of my own creations for the first time took a little getting used to, but they allow for great improvements to be made in the accuracy of the model.  However, I also noticed that for some areas of the finished model, my solutions to the problems could only be achieved using discontinued parts.  For example, the rake of the windscreen and the attachment of the front mud guards to the suspension uprights could only be achieved using the adjustable rotation of an axle with respect to a toggle joint.  It is a shame that this function in particular is not available with current Lego products.

Further details of the Caterham model can be found using the navigation bar at the foot of the page.  These include close-up photos, renderings and downloadable .dat files to enable better understanding of the different functions of the model.