Caterham Superlight R600 launched

If you are a hardcore Lotus Seven fan, then you will obviously be familiar with Caterham - the company that not only has all the official rights to produce modern day versions of the iconic Seven but has also over the years, successfully grown into a much bigger entity - from just manufacturing the Seven to pitting the Seven on the Formula1 grid.

And now Caterham Cars have rolled out the Caterham Superlight R600, the fastest and the most extreme Seven racecar to date, which is also the first-ever production Seven to feature a supercharged engine. The new model is now on sale in the U.K for around 45,000 pounds (or Rs 36 lakh approximately.)

A new Superlight R600 Championship will launch in 2013 and Caterham is expecting a grid of at least 16 cars to show up, with 30 cars anticipated for 2014.

Powering the R600 is a supercharged 2.0-litre Ford Duratec engine, which produces a max power of 279PS and 270Nm of torque. Transmission duties are handled by a six-speed, sequential gearbox and the rear wheel drive car comes with a limited slip differential and Avon race tyres.

Furthermore, a street-legal version of the R600 is also said to be in works that will be slightly detuned in order to compact with emission norms. 

As the new Superlight R600 hits the showrooms in U.K, the existing owners have also bee given an option of brining in their R300 cars and have them upgraded to the R600 spec.

There were reports that Caterham Cars was planning to make man entry into the Indian market and also the possibility of hosting a one make series race - much like the one they run in the U.K - but nothing concrete has resulted from those talks so far.