Caterham Seven 420R Donington Edition: driven

Caterham Cars is 60 years old this year. It is 40 years since the famous Donington Park racetrack reopened. What better excuse for a joint celebration, and the creation of a special limited edition car, the Caterham Seven 420R Donington Edition?

If you’ve visited Donington recently, you’ll recognise the blue and white paint scheme with flashes of red: it’s the same as Donington’s latest logo. But there’s more: trackday company BookaTrack is now a Caterham dealer, based at Donington: its own employees will build each of the 10 special edition Sevens.

Buying a Donington Caterham born at Donington will cost you £47,500, and for that you get much more than simply a Seven with a special paint job. It has the six-speed sequential gearbox of the full-fat 620R Caterham, plus a roll cage and an ‘aero screen’ – basically, no windscreen whatsoever. Even as an option. Or a roof.

With uprated springs and dampers specially tuned for this car, it can lay better claim than most to being a road-legal racing car. All it lacks are the expensive carbonfibre wings and the noisy side-exit exhaust. It promises to be sensational.

And it is. The team building it said the idea was to give performance car buyers a feel of what it’s like to drive a real racing car on a track day. It’s fast, but accessible, without the race car’s knife-edge handling, and has a surprising ability to cope out on the road (something you’d never dream of doing in the racer).

You get proper seats and luxuries such as lights and a heater, but although the race-style harnesses are simpler to do up, they still give a thrill as you buckle up. Inevitably, driving it is brilliant, and addictive. Suddenly you find yourself focusing on lap times, driving better and better with every lap, improving every session with Lewis Hamilton-like intensity.

It is a delightful car to drive, with all the feel of the racing car but les of its snappiness. You’ll be drifting it like a hero in no time. And then there’s the engine, all raw excitement and hair-raising acceleration. Using the gearbox is exciting and it generally recreates the racing experience wholly convincingly. Then, unlike the racer, you can drive it home again.