Caterham, the iconic British sports car manufacturer, is set to showcase its most radical model in decades next month. Codenamed ‘Project V’, the concept is expected to take the form of an electric two-seat sports car that will be entirely unrelated to the existing Caterham Seven. The new design will be showcased in July as Caterham marks its 50th anniversary. Leading the design programme is new design chief Anthony Jannarelly, best known for the W Motors Lykan Hypersport and his own Jannarelly Design-1. Working in partnership with Italdesign in Turin, the Frenchman is using this project as an opportunity to “please the existing Caterham fans while also trying to reach another type of audience” for the brand.

The Principles of Caterham

Creating a bridge between existing Caterham fans and a new audience is a “big responsibility”, but Jannarelly is “not nervous, because it’s exciting”. He believes that Caterham’s principles can be carried into and successfully embodied by a completely new product, irrespective of its positioning and the nature of its powertrain. “The principle is always lightness,” Jannarelly told Autocar. “What everybody loves about the Seven is that it’s a simple car that just works, and even if we’re making an EV, we will try to apply the same philosophy. It’s very simple. There will be no fancy features. The main thing is your enjoyment in driving this car.”

Jannarelly has almost total freedom with this car, because the function-over-form Seven “has no styling” as such. “The next car we’re going to make is the first car where we can really apply what could be the ‘Caterham styling’, which was not a fact of the Seven, which came from the Lotus [7],” he explained.

Beyond confirming that it won’t have a long bonnet and won’t be “bulky”, Jannarelly stopped short of giving strong clues as to the shape and size of the new model, although he did point to the slimness and simplicity of an EV architecture as facilitators for improved packaging and compactness.

Caterham CEO Bob Laishley’s passion for maintaining the brand’s hallmarks is also evident. “This will definitely not be a Seven,” Laishley previously said about the EV. “But it will have all the characteristics today’s Caterham customers know well: lightness, simplicity, agility and performance.” He continued: “Like the Seven, it will have a steel spaceframe – but a different one – because they’re easy to modify in production if you need to. It will have a six-panel enveloping body in aluminium or carbonfibre: two sills, two doors plus clamshell openings front and rear. It will be prettier and more modern than a Seven – those will be big points of distinction – and maybe it will have a roof. We’re designing it as a pure EV from the start, with rear drive only, and it will be registered under SVA rules.”

The Beauty of Electric Technology

Jannarelly’s commitment to lightness and simplicity tallies with his belief that electric technology offers a lot of space everywhere. The only issue for a sports car is the battery pack in the lower part of the car, so you need to find some tricks to make sure that the car doesn’t get too high. But once you’ve done that, you’re mainly free: you put your four wheels and you really try to be as close as possible to the bones of the car. An electric car platform is very skinny and simple. For him, that’s a great opportunity to apply the DNA of Caterham, which is simplicity.

The Future of Caterham

It’s not yet clear if Caterham will reveal a concept car or a pre-production prototype this year, but Laishley hinted at a plan to build the EV in a new factory – recently opened in Dartford – at greater volumes than the Seven and for it to have a higher base price. Caterham hasn’t suggested an on-sale date for the new car, but VT Holdings CEO Kazuho Takahashi’s eagerness to see it reach production suggests it could come as soon as 2026.

Q&A: Anthony Jannarelly, Chief Designer, Caterham

What drew you to Caterham?

“A Caterham was the first car I bought when I moved to Dubai, and that was a bit surprising, because I was a designer of a €3 million supercar [the W Motors Lykan], but actually what I wanted to drive was this very lightweight, back-to-basics retro sports car.”

Is it daunting to create an all-new Caterham model?

“If you expect something like the Seven, it’s not. Even if you asked me to redesign the Seven, we wouldn’t know what to do, because the beauty of the car is that form follows function, so anything you try to add or modify is pointless. So it’s difficult to try to analyse it too much. [The new car] has to have some similarities in the experience it gives you and the overall approach to design concept, but it can’t be something close to the Seven. That’s going to be the difficult thing, maybe, for some people to accept.”

How will electrification influence the design?

“The beauty of electric technology is that you have a lot of space everywhere. The only issue for a sports car is the battery pack in the lower part of the car, so you need to find some tricks to make sure that the car doesn’t get too high. But once you’ve done that, you’re mainly free: you put your four wheels and you really try to be as close as possible to the bones of the car. An electric car platform is very skinny and simple. For me, that’s a great opportunity to apply the DNA of Caterham, which is simplicity.”