With each the European Union and the United Kingdom set to ban internal-combustion engines subsequent decade, Caterham, like most automakers that primarily function in these areas, is making ready for an electrical future.
That future will embody an electrical model of the enduring Seven observe automotive, plus a extra mainstream open-top sports activities automotive that can be revealed in months, Autocar reported on Wednesday following an interview with Caterham’s new design chief, Anthony Jannarelly, the French designer behind the Jannarelly Design-1 and the supercars of Dubai’s W Motors.
The brand new sports activities automotive, considered the design of Kazuho Takahashi, a former racing driver whose automobile distribution firm in Japan, VT Holdings, acquired Caterham in 2021, will characteristic the identical sort of metal space-frame building because the Seven, however with modifications applicable for a automotive designed to drive exterior of a racetrack. Consumers are anticipated to have the selection of an aluminum or carbon-fiber physique.
For the outside design, Jannarelly has hinted on the similar mixture of retro and futuristic cues discovered on his Design-1 sports activities automotive, which incorporates a form impressed by Italian sports activities automobiles of the Fifties and ’60s however with loads of trendy cues blended in.
Anthony Jannarelly
“My imaginative and prescient for a future Caterham will discover my retro-futuristic design philosophy,” he mentioned in an announcement. “I need to take one of the best of each worlds—the class and ease of the previous mixed with the proportions and precision particulars of a contemporary sports activities automotive.”
Caterham got here shut to launching a mainstream sports activities automotive final decade. It was being developed alongside the Alpine A110, although Caterham pulled out of the mission in 2014 whereas Alpine went on to launch the A110 in 2017.
Whereas Caterham’s new electrical sports activities automotive will reportedly debut later this yr, manufacturing is not anticipated to start out till round 2026.
Any electrical Seven will solely arrive after that. A part of the reason being that that present EV expertise remains to be too heavy for a automotive just like the Seven.