Discussion
subirg said:
A car with great potential but never properly developed. Requires a lot of re-engineering work at the front end to get it to work properly. At that price ($145k) you’d be mad to get this instead of a radical.
Interesting comment about the front end. What did you think was wrong with it? As I said in a previous post I drove the car at the International Caterham Dealers meeting at Snetterton on a super warm day. I thought it was a little underpowered, the transmission was spectacular, the front end grip was amazing, although I was never near its limit, the turn in and front end stability at 140 mph + was super impressive. I'm keen to learn, what was I missing.
http://7cars.ca/documents/sp300/SP300R.pdf
Edited by Trackdayguy on Monday 19th November 21:42
I was at Spa a few years ago and met a company that specialised in trying to get the SP300R to work properly. Can’t remember the name, but spoke to the lead engineer at length as I was quite interested in the car. They were supporting a car they had been working on. I can’t remember the details, but the summary is that they had re-engineered the front geometry and steering rack. Total cost £11k.
subirg said:
I was at Spa a few years ago and met a company that specialised in trying to get the SP300R to work properly. Can’t remember the name, but spoke to the lead engineer at length as I was quite interested in the car. They were supporting a car they had been working on. I can’t remember the details, but the summary is that they had re-engineered the front geometry and steering rack. Total cost £11k.
Ouch... that's a lot of money.subirg said:
I was at Spa a few years ago and met a company that specialised in trying to get the SP300R to work properly. Can’t remember the name, but spoke to the lead engineer at length as I was quite interested in the car. They were supporting a car they had been working on. I can’t remember the details, but the summary is that they had re-engineered the front geometry and steering rack. Total cost £11k.
Given how few were made, I can't see how anyone could specialise in doing anything on them. The front end had a few flaws (as did most parts of it) but given that it was never supposed to be competitive against anything else, there would be absolutely no point in throwing £11k at it.sfaulds said:
BertBert said:
Didn't it also have an embarrassing habit of bursting into flames? I saw it do that at Donington.
It did it once iirc, just very publicly. Bert
sfaulds said:
Given how few were made, I can't see how anyone could specialise in doing anything on them. The front end had a few flaws (as did most parts of it) but given that it was never supposed to be competitive against anything else, there would be absolutely no point in throwing £11k at it.
Agreed. It’s a shame it never took off as the concept seemed great at the time. With a couple of good race seasons, it could have been developed into a competitive car. Sadly, it seems we will never know.Gassing Station | Caterham | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff