About 15 years ago I decided to build a kit-car

I had always liked the look of the AC Cobra and settled on the Gardner Douglas GD427 Jaguar chassis version.  After a couple of visits I put down a deposit and awaited production. Six months passed before I collected the body shell and the initial batch of parts.  Two and half years later I put the completed car through SVA and got it on the road.

My GD427 was a great car with astonishing performance but with work still taking me abroad a lot I was simply not finding enough opportunities to get out on the road and ended up selling it in 2016. 

Earlier this year my wife Roulla suggested that it might be time to build another car but this time to do it as a father / son project with Michael who is in his second year of a Mechanical Engineering degree at Bath university.  Not wishing be left out my daughters (Sophia and Georgia) also volunteered their help. This sounded like a great idea !

The question is what car? I had already built a Cobra with a 6.3L V8 and I felt the next car needed to be something different. I wanted something quick and old school but with less hours required for the build (the GD427 body shell alone took 300hrs to complete!). 

The Caterham 7 kit seemed to fit the requirements perfectly as its body panels are already prepared and painted. The Seven is also supplied as a complete kit (CKD in Caterham terms) so I would not have to source and refurbish donor parts. Using all new parts also means that the Seven would be registered as a new vehicle (hopefully a ’20 plate if we can get it all done this year).

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Why blog ?

One thing I learned during my research is that there is a  wealth of Caterham build blogs out there, all of them providing useful tips and insights into the ups and downs of the build process. 

My objective with this blog is primarily to create a personal record of the build but I also hope that I will be able to add something useful to the universe of Seven building along the way.