Tag Archives: Caterham Seven

Cars You Never Heard Of! Part 3

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I want to cover two more cars in this part.  The first will be the TVR S3..?? ..yeah…me too!  The second will the Caterham Seven.

TVR S3 was put up against the Triumph TR4 and frankly there is nothing I know about a TVR S3..so here we go.

TVR S3 C

TVR engineering started back in England in 1947 with the first TVR being produced in 1949.  Here’s the 2nd TVR built:

#2 TVR

Through out its history it used all types of engines include the Ford Kent engines and even a Buick engine  (3.5 litre Rover V8).

The S series was produced between 1986 – 1994.  The  TVR in this article had steel spaceframe chassis and a fiberglass body.  The engine was an iron, overhead valve, 2936cc 12v V6 with electronic fuel injection.  This power plant cranked out 168 hp and 170 lbft of torque.  The suspension was an independent double wishbone with rack and pinion steering.  This all combined to let the car reach its top speed of 135 mph.

In the comparison, the TVR S3 beat out the Triumph TR4 in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability 42 to 32.  The price of the TVR S3 is about 4000 Euros with the Triumph at 13,000 Euros.

The company was sold to a Russian buyer in 2004 and after a not so great start the company halted production.

For a full history on the TVR – check out  http://www.tvrsseries.com/

Next up is the Caterham 7:

Caterham Seven

The Caterham Seven is a kit car – you can still buy and build them today. Interesting enough it started out as the Lotus Six.  The next version was the Lotus Seven, however Lotus dropped the production and Catherham purchased the rights to build the kits.  The components are flexible with such pieces as Ford axles and de Dion-axles being used.  The engines used is very expansive  from the  Lotus Twin Cam engine to  Ford’s cross flow engines.  Even Cosworth BDRs appeared around 1983, in 1600 cc 140 bhp (104 kW) form, followed by 1700 cc 150 bhp (112 kW) versions three years later.  In the ’90’s the  common  engine had become the 2 litre Vauxhall HPC, as fitted to the Vauxhall Calibra, putting out 165—175 bhp.  Motor cycle engines have been also used with the likes of the GSXR1300 engine used in the Suzuki and the Honda CBR1100 engine.

These are favorites for the SCCA and other grass-roots racing.

Thanks for reading.

Tim.

Cars You Never Heard Of! Part 1

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Of course I spend a lot of time reading and again a lot of that is two or three-dimensional, although my wife says it’s a single dimension.  She sees just “CARS”  I see muscle cars, sedans (that I want to turn in to muscle cars), exotic cars and even some European cars.  That’s multi-dimensional, don’t you think?  I gained a little interest in them when I was a kid and my Dad surprised my Mother with a 60’ish MGB – mainly I learned that unless you wanted to fix ’em a lot…stay a way!!!

I gained a little more familiarization with another brand when I was in college.   I had my license suspended….you can figure out why…so don’t make me say ‘too many speeding tickets”, ok?  Thanks.  So it was only about a mile or so walk to the campus from where I stayed, but if you are from one of the colder States, like northern New York, then you’d know that a morning jaunt on  a Dec. morning is ‘nippy” to say the least.  So I would catch a ride with a friend.  He drove the one of the coolest cars I had ridden.  It was a Citroen. Similar to this one:

It had the coolest suspension that would raise when you started it and lower when you turned it off.

My point being that there is another dimension to my reading – European cars.  But I am in no way any kind of expert with any of them – although when I lived in Germany, I drove a very old European Ford Escort.  That car was horrible!!!! However, it got me round, even when the upper part of the seat frame broke and the only way to drive it was by holding yourself forward using the steering wheel else the seat back, because it leaned so much, should dump you in the back seat.  Last  year I signed up for..please kneel…”HEMMINGS”… thank you….you may relax now… SPORTS & EXOTIC CAR magazine – some great articles and I enjoy Mike’s and Richard’s writings. Geezze, this is a long way around to the point that I picked up a copy of Classic & Sports Car magazine – UK produced – the other day.

In this was a series of articles that pitted 4 pair of cars against each other.  One car in each pair was an expensive classic brand/model and the other was relatively inexpensive newer brand/model.  Two things dawned on me, one was,”Hey, I’ve never heard of a Reliant Scimitar SS1 or a Panther Kallista.”   The  second thing was, “Hey, have never heard of any of these cars!”   Normally if  I have just one of these realizations – I won’t read the article… nope not interested…. but this time I did.

And now I need to know a little about these cars and I know you do to….all three of my readers!!!  So we’ll take a look at  the Panther Kallista and the  Caterham Seven and the TVR S3 and the Reliant Scimitar SS1.

First up is the Reliant Scimitar SS1.

This car (at about 3000 British Pounds  – $6000 USD) was being compared to the Lotus Elan (at 16000 British Pounds or about $32,000 USD).  Here is what it looks like:

Reliant Scimitar SS1

Not bad-looking!!!!

These cars were made from 1986 to 1990, however the Scimitar  actually arrived on the scene in 1964 with a Ford straight 6 cylinder as the power plant.  These more recent models  had a spaceframe chassis and fiberglass body, an iron block, alloy heads, SOHC 1809 cc, 8 valve 4.  It also sported a Garrett T2 Turbo with electronic multi-port fuel injection system.  This allowed it to  lay out 140 HP and 141 lb ft of torque and reach a top speed of 128 mph and it only weighted 1969 lbs.

They sported a 5 speed manual transmission, rack and pinion steering, double wishbone independent suspension and disks breaks.

Just to give you some closure, it was compared to the Lotus Elan where it scored 2 points less than the Lotus (38 to 40) in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability.

Any one out there have one of these?  Know anyone that has one?  If so drop a comment and pic.

Thanks for reading.

Tim