OU on the BBC: Caterham Super Sevens - Caterham - Survival of the Fastest

Used with permission

"It would take just six months." They said it with such confidence that, looking back, I suppose I believed them.

We were filming in a gleaming workshop in Oxfordshire as a group of men clustered around a small retro-looking sports car with a long red bonnet and bug eyed headlights. The little racer was the sole product of British based Caterham Cars. It was called The Seven.

Amongst those standing around the car was a fresh-faced thirty-one year old, Simon Nearn, Caterham's Managing Director. Having taken over the company his father had founded thirty years before, this was Simon's moment to make his lasting mark. It was Day One of an ambitious plan to secure the long-term future of the family business.

With a small film crew, we were to follow the Caterham team and Simon's chosen partners, Reynard Motorsport, for the six months they planned to spend designing, then building a brand new car. It was a bold plan to prepare the company for a future in which the forty-five year old Caterham Seven could become obsolete.

I ended up following this six month project for three years. At the end of it all, the Simon Nearn I interviewed on a hill above Whitstable looked a little less fresh-faced. The documentary we ended up with wasn't quite the story we had expected.

Production team

The motor industry is notoriously secretive. To keep their competitive edge, new cars are designed far from the prying eyes of the media. In the studios of the major manufacturers high security is vital to guard against people smuggling out pictures of 'the next big thing'.

Caterham is a much smaller operation but they were equally nervous about allowing cameras to document the project they were embarking on. The film was to be a rare insight into the birth of a new car. To their credit, with the occasional gentle reminder, Caterham allowed us to film the entire process, even when the going got tough.

For me the story that slowly unfolded in front of our camera is about far more than cars. It is a story of succession: succession of management in a family run business and succession of product in a one product business. It is a snapshot of a period in time where the past and the present did battle for control of the future.

Had I known more of the history of the car Caterham was setting out to replace, perhaps I would have understood difficulties the team might face. The Caterham Seven is a product with a long history. It was designed back in 1957 by Colin Chapman, a man without whom the 'legends of British motorsport' file would have looked rather thinner. Chapman's design had survived through a combination of timeless appeal and the enterprise and sheer hard work of Simon's father, Graham Nearn and colleagues who took over production of The Seven in the early Seventies. Although The Seven had evolved substantially over the years, it had always remained true to the spirit of Chapman's original design.

Production team

This glorious past seemed to leave the present day team struggling to work out what bearing the weight of history had on their revolutionary design for the future.

Chapman’s car became a classic because of the simplicity of his vision: "keep it light and it will go fast, keep it cheap and people will buy it and I can make money from it." Today, the engineers no longer run the show. Car design has become highly marketing led.

"Lots of people have produced great sports cars but if people won’t buy them then you’re in trouble" - the line seemed to become a mantra for the entire Caterham team. Simple realism maybe, but you could almost hear Chapman’s ghost sniff at the fear of failure lurking behind it.

I would like to be able to reveal whether past or present prevails but I can’t. Business stories only ever truly end when the company goes bust. After spending three years watching them, I know this tale isn’t over.

It is Caterham Cars’ thirtieth birthday this year. It will be interesting to see what they are selling in another thirty years from now.

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