From windscreen to TV screen
Can Caterham Cars update their classic 'Seven' design and maintain their market in the future? Find out more about the programme.
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Director, Barnaby Peel, on a documentary that looked like it might never happen.
"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.
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Content last updated: 25/03/2003
