Category: Affordable Sports 
Price Range: £16,695 to £21,395
Driving involvement; steering feel; performance; handling.
Too hardcore for some; tiring over long distances; no ABS; expensive.
The perfect antidote to over-sanitised modern cars
To the untrained eye, the Seven looks, quite frankly, ancient and as if it should have been pensioned off in the early Seventies. Yet actually, it could be the template for the sports cars of the future. Soon, cars like the Seven will be only way manufacturers can satisfy enthusiasts' need for speed and supercar performance in the face of ever-stricter fuel consumption and emissions targets.
At the top of the Caterham performance tree is the R500, which has stolen headlines with its Bugatti-humbling 0-60mph time of 2.88 seconds. However, that car is nothing more than a stripped-out race car with number plates, so we thought it best to try something more real-world.
For half of the £38,000 Caterham charges for the R500, you could have the more down-to-earth Roadsport 150. This shares its engine with a Ford Focus - but no Focus has ever gone this quickly. The four-cylinder 1.6 has been tuned for 150bhp, thanks to a different camshaft, ECU tweaks and other minor modifications, and as the Caterham weighs just 550kg, it can hurtle from standstill to 60mph in 4.9 seconds.
Almost just as impressive is that, when driven sensibly, there's half a chance of the Caterham cracking 30mpg. But do you really want to drive sensibly?
