3 owners, FSH, last owner 10 years, 58,000 miles. What's not to like. It's not even silver, the silver ones seem really naff now.If that checks out ok and isn't as rotten as a pear underneath then it's a great buy. Caveat emptor though, the problem with cars like that is that they are bought by people who don't want to pay for maintenance so they just run them like bangers.
He even photoed the receipt to show the level of abuse.Ha ha, £7K spent on the last service, just £12K on the next. This is why I didn’t dare buy a Porsche under £10K. Anyone thinking of it should befriend a good mechanic pronto.
Do it. Even a low powered 7 is a fast car. I had a 1995 1.4 K series, a Supersport with "only" 128bhp (130 when bragging in the pub) and it did 0-60 in 6 sec (5.9 in the pub). It was not the fastest, the fastest at the time was the R500 that had about 260bhp. However on a public road, driven with intent, the difference was not marked. Even a low powered 7 goes like a stabbed rat. They are scary fast, not because of straight line performance but because when you turn in there is only half a tonne changing direction. Even a light hot hatch these days weighs 1.2 tonnes. You can't corner 1 tonne like you can a car weighing half that, I don't care what tyres you have. As a result a 7 will outcorner anything on the road this side of a Colin McRea WRC 4x4 where the computers do the work for you and you just put your foot down and point it. This does mean that when a 7 loses traction, you have no clever assistance. If you run out of talent at high speed in a corner, then you are on your own. The snag is that the limits of these cars are so high that you very quickly get into invincible mode, you have thrown the thing into corner after corner at increasingly ridiculous speeds without mishap, so here comes another one, wahe...ooh, possibly a bit quick, I'll just lift off a ta...cue spin, at a potentially very high speed. I learned this on a track, which is the place to learn that you are not as talented as you think you are. The same incident on a road could easily end in tears.
I can therefore confirm that any 7 is a very fast car. There may be faster ones, but you won't hang on to your licence for long if you buy one and need to prove it all the time. The joy of the 7 and similar cars is that unless you are insane you will have your fun at speeds that don't involve immediate loss of licence. The downside is that in winter they are miserable, there's no way you want to drive one on a wet motorway, ever. After dark, even less.
The Caterham's problem was the Ford Type 9 'box and the Sierrra back axle. Great units but a high FDR and a very low first gear that Ford wanted for caravan duties in the Sierra. As a result the K series on a Type 9 was basically a 3 speed box. 2-3-4 were great, 5 too high for all other than droning down a Mway, 1 too low. The cliff between 1 and 2 would drop you off the cam if you didn't rev it out to 5k+ in first.Off topic, but this post brought back some memories from nearly 30 years back. The Caterham K16 1400 felt and was overgeared as was the basic K16 1800 in the Elise. My colleagues in the Rover Longbridge performance development team helped Caterham out a lot, though I must admit I didn't enjoy the 2 hours my ex-manager forced me to spend in one driving the "long" route back from Canley ("the Triumph") back to Longbridge ("the Austin") in an early production Caterham K. Later on, I urged Lotus that they needed the FDR from the MG-F VVT transmission
I blame you for the plastic dowels! Who thought that was a good idea?BTW I was only responsible for performance and economy on K-Series variants (as was bor of this parish back in the day when I joined) so don't blame me for K head gaskets!
Interesting, but why SC a 1.4 when you have a bigger 16 and 18 on the shelf?Two of the more interesting K-variants never saw the light of day namely the K16 1270cc (a really sweet revving unit) and the K16 1400 Sprintex supercharger.
Chapeau, mon beau gars.One for the nerd's history books (and my team's claim to fame) is that the 2nd gen KV6 2.0 and 2.5 were (I believe) the first ever volume production engines to run fully adaptive knock ignition at borderline limit from 98 RON down to 91 RON fuel. I still don't think many, if at all any, modern cars have a 7-octane fully adaptive fuel range, nearly a quarter century on.
Not sure we should be posting video of people being killed, on here, TBH.Poor guy. RIP.
Off topic, but this post brought back some memories from nearly 30 years back. The Caterham K16 1400 felt and was overgeared as was the basic K16 1800 in the Elise. My colleagues in the Rover Longbridge performance development team helped Caterham out a lot, though I must admit I didn't enjoy the 2 hours my ex-manager forced me to spend in one driving the "long" route back from Canley ("the Triumph") back to Longbridge ("the Austin") in an early production Caterham K. Later on, I urged Lotus that they needed the FDR from the MG-F VVT transmission (this helped reduce overall gearing and kept a gap between the basic but tourquier basic small valve 1800 MG-F and the bigger valved MG-F VVT which suffered from poorer low speed engine output), but they rebuffed saying it was still plenty quick enough. BTW I was only responsible for performance and economy on K-Series variants (as was bor of this parish back in the day when I joined) so don't blame me for K head gaskets! Two of the more interesting K-variants never saw the light of day namely the K16 1270cc (a really sweet revving unit) and the K16 1400 Sprintex supercharger. One for the nerd's history books (and my team's claim to fame) is that the 2nd gen KV6 2.0 and 2.5 were (I believe) the first ever volume production engines to run fully adaptive knock ignition at borderline limit from 98 RON down to 91 RON fuel. I still don't think many, if at all any, modern cars have a 7-octane fully adaptive fuel range, nearly a quarter century on.
3 owners, FSH, last owner 10 years, 58,000 miles. What's not to like. It's not even silver, the silver ones seem really naff now.
This is why I didn’t dare buy a Porsche under £10K. Anyone thinking of it should befriend a good mechanic pronto. And then pray.
I’d be asking myself why they’re selling at that price. Fair private seller or do they know something we don’t but should?