Caterham Superlight R500 (2008) CAR review

The R500: Caterham’s maddest, meanest creation returns to scare witless anyone brave enough to strap themselves into its kevlar bucket seat: more advanced, more usable, but promising to be as vicious as an R500 should be.

Caterham R500 Superlight – that means 500bhp per tonne, right?

Yes: 263bhp powering an object weighing 506kg to be precise, so it's actually a bit more. Essentially this R500 is an R400 with its track-focused Series 3 chassis (not the CSR chassis) fitted with a fully stoked Ford Duratec and lots of carbonfibre bits. It actually weighs 9kg less than an R400 thanks to thinner body panels and aluminium rear light clusters amongst a host of other tweaks. There are also the options, at additional cost, of a sequential gearbox, a carbonfibre airbox, a track suspension package (in addition to the adjustable Bilsteins as standard) and launch control.

So this is Caterham at its most extreme?

Any car faintly resembling a bathtub on wheels with 500bhp-per-tonne is going to be extreme, let’s face it. However, the difference between this latest creation and the old, Rover K-series powered R500, is that you no longer need to mercilessly cane the life out of the engine to extract that supercar-humbling performance.

Caterham has worked hard at mapping the midrange so that there’s ample shove on offer at sensible rpm. And there's an appreciable step-up in power around 5500rpm. Other niceties include a new dashboard with keyless go and handy little indicator buttons on the tiny steering wheel. 

Click 'Next' below to read more of our Caterham Superlight R500 first drive