The car as a camel

We’ll find out over the next year or so as British car manufacturer Caterham – makers of the legendary Seven – develop a new model through online suggestions from the public at a site called Splitwheel.com.

With its roots deeply entwined with Lotus, Caterham is known for lightweight sports cars, of the kind where you get four wheels, an engine … and precious little else.

This makes them perfect as track cars of course. And it also makes them popular as kit cars. When you don’t have to worry about pesky things like airconditioning, power seat adjustment and rear-seat DVD systems, a car can be a very simply prospect to construct.

It remains to be seen whether this will be true of the Splitwheel Caterham. If the world at large designs the car, we’re likely to end up with … well, anything.

The Americans will want about 10 cupholders, to start with. And really large ones, to hold the takeaway cups over there, where there are apparently a few Starbucks still open and serving what passes for coffee.

They’ll probably want big seats too, because they need to accommodate the result of slurping all those Super-Size-Full-Cream-Choco-Malto-Lattes … which is big seats.

And there’ll be a certain percentage of the Australian population – those who thought the rerun of Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift was truly Movie of the Week – who will insist on a high double-winged spoiler, of the kind mostly found on those Subaru WRXs and Mitsubishi EVOs patrolling the post-teen dating beat. As well as a few unfortunate remaining Hyundai Excels and Toyota Supras that were bizarrely subjected to customisation in the belief that this would make them sexy.

The French will need a few ashtrays, too, since everybody there is required by law to smoke a packet of foul-smelling filterless cigarettes every day to keep the country shrouded in the film noir-ish fog that enhances tourist brochure views of the Eyeful Tower.

And most of the Germans will be trying to decide which overly-complicated satnav/GPS/audio/info/microwave/toaster system should be shoved into the dash. At least, that’s judging by the models coming from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. Porsche is too busy buying up the rest of Volkswagen (which owns Audi, in any case).

The Swedish will insist on front wheel drive, quadruple-sashed seatbelts and airbags everywhere – including the floor and ceiling.

But the Chinese probably won’t make any suggestions about engineering or design. They’ll just wait to see what Caterham builds, and copy it.

India will simply wait until the British venture fails. And then buy it to make a matched trio with Jaguar and Land Rover.