Is there a harder ask or taller in-tray in the British car industry than the one presented to Bob Laishley when he succeeded Graham Macdonald as? Nevertheless, Laishley, formerly the firm’s Chief Strategic Officer, hasn’t had a second to rest on his laurels since joining from Nissan. After all, Caterham has the end of combustion engines to worry about - and the perils of electrification that come after it.
But a quarter century spent at one of the world’s largest manufacturers has well equipped Laishley for the challenge, and the man is nothing if not ambitious. Aid and abetted by an enthusiastic owner - Japan’s VT Holdings - Caterham is apparently busy hatching plans for a future brand-new, rear-drive electric sports car, one endowed with its virtues of ‘lightness, simplicity, agility and performance’ but also prettier and ‘more modern’ than the Seven - and potentially furnished with a roof, too.
Obviously, there’s space on the drawing board for an electric-only variant down the road, but while his predecessor, Laishley is apparently happy to concede that Caterham will need to wait for the technology to catch up with its unique requirements. Hence all the excitement about a more expensive and possibly all-weather EV to be launched in the next few years; a new larger volume model that wouldn’t be quite so bound by the Seven’s unimpeachable and character-defining red lines.
Of course, it would still need to be a Caterham. The company CEO suggested to Autocar that it would retain a steel spaceframe and probably a ‘six-panel enveloping body in aluminium or carbon’. But there will be sills and proper doors, too, hence the possibility of a fixed roof.
Needless to say, he will also be well aware of Caterham’s previous attempts to colour outside the Seven’s lines. The aborted Alpine-led C120 project is an easy reference point when it comes to the recent past, but the firm also had a much more sustained goes with cars like the Caterham 21 , the oft-forgotten and track-only SP/300.R, and the now decade-old, CSR-based AeroSeven, which was absolutely going to make it to series production - but never did.
Let's hope it looks better than that.
Going to need better batteries on the grounds of the current tech not being light
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