Caterham 620R vs Caterham 160: Battle of the Sevens

Its real unique selling point is that this is probably the most usable Caterham of all, the one you’re most likely to drive for reasons other than seeing how fast you can get around a track or from point A to point B on a great country road. Thanks to its shortage of power and the corresponding reduction in grip brought by hard, skinny tyres and live rear end, you don’t need to be on a circuit or up a mountain before it starts doing all those things we love Caterhams to do.

To the interesting accompaniment of the responsive little Suzuki engine, the 160 will slide and drift at remarkably modest and legal speeds. And because it has a sub-half-tonne mass to control and its chassis is so good-natured, it makes you feel like the superhero who can stay on the right side of the law, and do so on roads you use every day.

Its problems are not those you’d expect. The performance doesn’t feel hopeless and its tiny turbo engine isn’t prone to lag. But the gear ratios in the five-speed ’box are weird. Second is so low that it works perfectly well as a first gear (in effect making it a four-speed ’box) and the jump from there to third is greater than the torque of the little engine can comfortably cover. Also, don’t go thinking that its soft suspension and narrow tyres will produce a beautiful ride; the live axle puts paid to that notion. The range of frequencies fed to your bottom vary from fidgety to choppy.

You don’t have time to think about ride quality in the 620R. Nor time to think of anything other than grabbing another sequentially selected gear. What makes Caterham’s flagship among the most vivid experiences that it is possible to have with a steering wheel in your hands is not the power of its 311bhp supercharged 2.0-litre engine, but its torque.

What will get you giggling and your passenger screaming is not the performance per se, but its immediacy. Whereas other even really fast Caterhams need to be wound up with high revs and low gears before they’ll really let go, if you nail the 620R throttle at something as modest as 3000rpm in fourth gear, it simply goes berserk. Thereafter, it’s a question of how wild a ride you want or, indeed, can cope with.

For there is nothing easy about driving the 620R quickly and, in this regard, it is the polar opposite of the 160. It is not that its chassis is tricky. Indeed, in its own way, it is just as benign as that of the 160. But because its speed is so immense and the grip from cut slick tyres so other-worldly, everything happens in x12 fast forward. You need time to dial into it. When you have and as long as you have the space and no one to see or hear its quite deafening song, it will enchant and bewitch, and reach and recover from apparently irrecoverable angles.

But here’s the thing: you can’t just jump into the 620R and enjoy it. You’ll have to push it to the end of the street because it’s definitely someone else’s neighbours you’re going to want to wake when it starts. You’re then going to need to endure probably some hours of brain-numbing noise before you get anywhere you can use it properly. More likely, you’re going to need a trailer. With the 160, you’d slip out unnoticed and probably have slipped in a few sneaky skids while the bloke with the 620R was still ratcheting down the straps.

I’m delighted that the 620R exists; there is nothing else this money will buy that could excite, engage and enthuse me more, and the same can be said of the 160 at its rather more modest price point. But out there in the inconveniently real world, the 160 makes a compelling argument for itself as a Seven that you can both afford and use. I’d like a little more power, a limited-slip diff and some more attractive wheels, but this is still not a car for which apologies need be made. Just like the 620R, it is a Seven through and through.