Caterham Unveils Project V… and it’s Pretty Cool

British sports car company Caterham is known by almost everyone for the Seven, a range of lightweight, open-top sports cars. But recently, Caterham revealed an all-new electric sports car called the Project V, making it’s debut at the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England.

Okay, so technically, Project V is just a concept for now. But it looks fully production ready, and Caterham has made no secret of their desire to put it into production, saying they hope to bring it to market around late 2025 or early 2026. While it won’t replace the Seven, as Caterham’s goal is to produce both cars, it’s certainly a radical departure from Caterham’s legendary lightweight roadster, which still looks essentially like it did when it first came out in the 50s.

The Project V is a fully enclosed sports car, for one thing, flaunting a rounded, modern design rather than digging deep into the retro aesthetics Caterham has banked on– and mastered– with the Seven. That being said, all signs point to Project V still inheriting much of Caterham’s DNA and, thus, the Seven’s most exciting qualities. Those hereditary characteristics include the very lightweight design; a shocking feat, especially given its EV powertrain, weighing in at just 1,190 kilograms (about 2,623 pounds). This is an impressive accomplishment, primarily the result of the carbon fiber construction. That figure is for the standard 2+1 model, with only one center rear seat, but it seems likely that even the 2+2 will weigh in at under 3,000 pounds.

The powertrain consists of a single rear-mounted 200kW motor, paired to a 55kWh lithium-ion battery pack. While the car has no concrete performance figures yet, Caterham estimates about 268 bhp, a 0-62 time of under 4.5 seconds and a top speed of around 143 miles per hour. Range is estimated at around 249 miles on the European testing system, and it boasts a potential 20-80 percent recharge rate in “as little as 15 minutes,” provided it’s chained to a 150kW DC fast charger. The only potential hurdle is the price, estimated to start “from less than 80,000 pounds” in the UK— that means a stateside window sticker would peak just over $100,000.

That is, of course, if Project V 1.) gets the production greenlight, and 2.) makes it way to the United States. It’s not yet clear if Project V will be coming to the US; but, boy, we sure hope so.