Ever been landed with a four-figure bill you weren’t expecting? Looked at from one direction it seems unlikely – a thousand pounds is a hell of charge not to see heading over the hill. But from the other, the direction that those of us who own old cars see (or don’t, as the case may be) things from, I bet there’s not a single one of you who’s not experienced the wincing, clenching pain of a really big hit you didn’t see coming until it smacked you right in the mush.
To add insult to considerable financial injury, the Caterham shows not one sign you can see, hear, feel, taste or smell of all that hard-earned moolah I have unwittingly festooned upon its ungrateful, bug-eyed, good-for-nothing body. It looks the same, it drives the same. The only detectable difference to anything all this money had made is to the health and welfare of my bank balance. But with whom am I really angry? Myself really.
The bloke who looks after the car is called Gerard Holloway and he runs a company called Virtual 7 Race Engineering. He’s a bit of a Seven legend who spends most of his time preparing other people’s Caterham race cars and racing his own. He really enjoys working on my car because it’s a street machine with an old Ford crossflow motor and he doesn’t get work on that kind of Seven very often.
