Lotus Seven, Sports car blueprint

The Seven is over half a century old, but Lotus founder Colin Chapman's original lightweight concept is still going strong. Loads of people have used the Seven chassis for their cars, but Caterham and Westfield are the two most notable proponents of the Seven's minimalist philosophy today, with the former having bought the rights to the original Seven chassis after Lotus production officially ended in 1972.

That minimalist philosophy is simple: the lighter, the quicker. So, anything that wasn't necessary didn't make it into the Seven, hence it's spartan, tubular appearance. Its flat body panels were so because it kept costs down, and the original came powered by a 40bhp Ford engine, as seen in the Anglia saloon. Available as a kit or in fully built form (though the former was most popular because it cost half as much thanks to heavy taxes on factory built cars), the unassembled kit packages rather bizarrely came with 'disassembly' instructions, because tax law stated that build instructions couldn't be included. Chapman, in his ingenuity, realised that there was no law against disassembly guidance, so buyers simply had to follow those in reverse. What buyers ended up with was a car that still today sets benchmarks in purity of handling.

Mark Nichol