Super 7!

Well, today was a landmark day for me. I finally got to drive the Caterham-produced Lotus 7 replica kit car. To be fair, Caterham really has far more ownership of the car than Lotus ever has, given that Caterham's been building and selling them for over 40 years now, whereas Lotus discontinued them after 12 or 13 years. In any event, this car has been my dream car for well over a year now, and I truly believe it will continue to be #1 on my list of must-have cars. (Check it out: www.rmsci.com/picarchive/jpe1.jpg) Anyway, the car weighs, roughly, 1100 lbs. To put things in perspective, that's about 1/3 of what my '03 Accord V6 weighs. It stands about 39" tall (3.5 feet, for those of you not good at math), which is about 15" shorter than the accord, and only 130" long, a solid 35ish" shorter. (Width-wise they're about the same, which is good, because a wide body helps with cornering.) The car I drove today (which I couldn't properly flog, partially because it was already sold and partially 'cause the sun was in my eyes) only had about 140 horses, and it was still at least as quick, if not quicker, than the accord (which gets 0-60 in about 6 seconds.) The top of the line 7 that I'm going to get will get 0-60 in about 3.2 seconds. That's faster than pretty much any production car anywhere on the planet. Now, I respect almost any fast car, be it a suped-up rice rocket or a massive V8-powered muscle car. But I can't wait to pull up next to either of the above, watch them probably sneer or laugh at me (as the 7 clearly isn't a very menacing car), and then just leave them in my dust. And, although not cheap at about $50,000 (for the kit, engine, and tranny), that's a hell of a lot cheaper than slower, bulkier, less exotic cars that are over half a million bucks. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...