CarBrandLogos archive · Caterham · 1994
The pretty one, launched at exactly the wrong moment against exactly the wrong rival.
Discover the storyPhoto: Brian Snelson · CC BY 2.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Caterham 21, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
For its twenty-first anniversary Caterham tried to build something other than the Seven. The 21 used the Seven's running gear and much of its chassis thinking beneath a smooth, fully enclosed roadster body designed by Iain Robertson, with doors, weather protection and a boot — the civilised sports car the company had never offered.
Festival of the Unexceptional 2019 · Tony Harrison · CC BY-SA 2.0
02
It was shown in 1994 and reached customers slowly. Then, in 1996, Lotus launched the Elise: bonded aluminium tub, mid-engined, cheaper to buy and vastly more advanced. The 21 had no answer to it, and Caterham's own Seven remained the better car for the money it was aimed at. Production ended in 1999 after only a few dozen were built.
03
The 21 is worth remembering less as a failure than as a demonstration of why Caterham has stayed with one model. Nothing about the car was bad; it simply had no reason to exist beside its stablemate once a genuinely modern rival appeared.
At a glance
Produced
1994–1999Engine
Rover K-Series 1.6L I4Designer
Iain RobertsonBody
2-door roadsterTechnical specification
Contemporaries from the 1990s
Spotted something wrong on this page? Send us the correction — with a source, and we will fix it. How this site is written.
