Catherham(Westfield) - Super 7 Touge Review | Meeting with a Japanese Car Enthusiast | JDM Masters

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Join us as we explore something different from our usual JDM car reviews. This is about the pureness and appreciation of driving in Japan on Japanese touge. We met a Japanese car enthusiast while filming the AE111 / AE86 video who volunteered to assist us in the action shots in his classic but also rare version of the Caterham Super Seven kit car made in the U.K. A car with no compromises to a pure driving experience and feeling. Built with the same concept as a Formula chassis car with an old school thinking that never gets old or boring. Provided you can accept the lack of comfort and conveniences, with its old Ford 1.6 litre carburetor 120PS engine, this is motoring in its rawest form. Find out Takuma san's reason and philosophy behind his choice for this car.

His car is a alternative version of the Lotus Caterham Super Seven. Although purists may consider this as a 'copy' or 'imitation' of the more popular Lotus. But there is a number of differences in the specification and built that has certain improvements. The brief story of Westfield is as below.

Westfield Sportscars are manufacturers of both factory built and kit versions of several two-seater, open top sportscars. Their main product line is a Lotus Seven inspired car - vehicles originally designed by Colin Chapman with only the bare essentials for motoring in order to give the rawest and most exhilarating driving experience.
Whilst Caterham Cars bought the rights from Lotus Cars, Chris Smith set up a rival company and manufactured kits with very similar styling and construction. This led Caterham to threaten litigation (based on Industrial design rights) in the late 1980s which was eventually settled out of court and resulted in Westfield improving and changing the design of their cars. Whilst externally sharing a common look, Westfield and Caterham cars are somewhat different in construction. Westfield prefers to employ the same glass fibre body method that Lotus has traditionally used for their other models such as the Elise, Esprit, and Elan, rather than the aluminium used by Caterham.

Westfield has also pioneered technical innovations such as Independent rear suspension and a wider chassis, which other manufacturers have since adopted. The company has recently introduced a version of its SEi kit that uses donor parts from the Mazda Mx5 Miata. This is generally called an SDV (Single Donor Vehicle) kit. There is also an SDV kit that uses a Ford Sierra as a donor. The wide range of drivetrain configurations available to Westfield customers now includes the Honda S2000 engine and gearbox as part of the company's MegaS2000 kit and cars.

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