February 2002
Decide to sell Lotus Elise in favour of two cars, one daily driver and one toy for weekends and track days, probably a Caterham.
The Elise is great car but I am not really using it properly. These days it gets used for driving to work and back, and not a lot else. It seems like quite a luxury to do this, which is nice, but costly. The mileage is quickly adding up, so I either had to keep running it or move on.
Fortunately I have a garage now, and some basic maths said that I could pretty much swap the Elise for a second hand Caterham with a reasonable spec. Then I just need to find a few k for a runaround car. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer when I put it like that…!
I’ve been reading around and looking into Caterhams for quite a while already, but now I’m taking it more seriously. If I get a Caterham what I really want is a Superlight. This seems like pretty much the perfect spec for me – relatively low power, but that easily be upgraded later once I am used to the car, and it has all the other “right” bits.
I’d really like to build one, but the prices for new kits are way out of my (seemingly steadily increasing!) budget. It would cost me around £22k for all the bits alone, and that is before I have taken any cost of the build itself.
Also I’m quite taken with the motorbike engined variants. This seems like a great idea – you get a (relatively) cheap engine which revs forever and a six speed sequential gearbox thrown in too. Lots of power available in standard tune and a lightweight package too. The problem is that the bike engined Caterhams are even more expensive than a K-series.

Early March 2002
Find latest MegaBird special offer on Westfield website.
Now this looks interesting. I’ve spent quite a lot of time researching the Caterham, and seemed pretty decided on what I was going to do. However I thought it would be only sensible to have a look at the alternatives. I’m spending quite a bit of money so it should be a properly considered/informed decision.
I’m really warming to the idea of the Westfield. For starters I can afford to build it from new – this is something that I just really want to do. OK so it’s not the most cost-effective way of getting a car, but hell it’s only money and if I don’t do it now I won’t do it until I’m 50! The Westfield is really well engineered and more of a kit car than the Caterham, the build is more involved and takes longer. Also I must admit to being a fan of the independent rear suspension over the deDion used on the Caterham.
As a hillclimb and sprint fan, I’ve seen plenty of Westfields in action in my time, and they seem generally very comparable to the Caterham.
This is turning into a serious propostion... and I get to try the bike engined car route, which will give me a truly different experience to another K-series engine...

9th March 2002
My lovely Lotus Elise is sold, and my new (old) Fiat Punto Sporting is here as my runaround car. This will keep me mobile while the new sportscar is found, and also do the majority of the commuting and “chore driving”.

14th March 2002
Contact Westfield to request latest brochure and details.

19th March 2002
Contact Westfield to arrange a factory visit and test drive.I’m visiting my parents over the Easter bank holiday weekend, and the Westfield factory is not far from their house. So I’ve booked myself on to the “Westfield Experience” which is basically a factory tour and a demo drive/ride in a car. If I’m going to go for the special offer MegaBird they currently have then I’m going to have to get on with it before they are all sold.

29th March 2002
“Westfield Experience” day.
Drive up to Halesowen from Cambridge in the morning, then over to the Westfield factory at Kingswinford. Simon Westwood shows me around the factory and fab shop, answering all my inane questions about bike engined cars and Westfields in general. The standard of engineering on the cars seems very good, and I might be missing something, but struggle to see how the Caterham is be better. The relative value for money of the Westfield product certainly cannot be ignored.
Go out for a ride in a MegaBusa, which was unsurprisingly pretty awesome. I’ve been out in a couple of Caterhams and the experience is pretty raw, but this just takes it on to another level. The mini race engine you have available, the screaming exhaust as the revs race round to 10,000rpm, and the sequential gearshift are all highly addictive. And yet it seems remarkably happy to drive around at 2000rpm in top in the (awful) traffic we encounter around the factory. The ride of the independent suspension is definitely noticeably more controlled on the rougher road surfaces.
After the ride, I sit down and go through costs and specs with Simon, working on my approximate budget and requirements.
I have to admit to being unexpectedly impressed – I wasn’t expecting the Westfield to be as good as the Caterham, but in experience it is… and it is certainly very tempting.

30th March 2002
Next morning I couldn’t resist calling by the factory again to have another look at the car and run through some more questions with Simon. He is being very patient with my questions, some of which seem remarkably sillybut, like the Elise, the product seems to sell itself. This is a surprising reversal, and I’m seriously considering going for it. Just got to make that decision, and do it!

©2002-2009 David Hackett UDM4