Remember when there was an air of mystery around TV shows? Just think how incredible it is that Top Gear kept The Stig’s real identity a secret for as long as it did, with relentless speculation from the tabloids about who the muted character in full race garb could be. Then there were the one-off races. Was it really that close between the Bugatti Veyron and public transport? Was the trip to the North Pole as perilous as it looked? And so on, so forth…
Thankfully, these are all questions that have been fired at Richard Porter (friend of PH and 50 per cent of Smith and Sniff) and Ben Collins for many years in countless podcast interviews and YouTube videos. Therefore, we now have a pretty good idea of what went on behind the scenes of ‘old’ TG and Amazon’s The Grand Tour follow-up, although there are still some unsolved mysteries that have kept speculators entertained for years, like the obscured images shown during the ‘I went on the internet and found this’ segment and whether or not Fifth Gear really did burn down the old studio. Well, here’s another for you: what happened to all the off-road bits on this Caterham Seven 310R that once starred on The Grand Tour?
To recap: the special ‘A Massive Hunt’ saw James May take this very 310R to Madagascar before ‘transforming’ it into an off-roader with massive, tractor-like rear wheels, spotlights and a snorkel. Like an Ariel Nomad, only somehow more outrageous. That said, it looked relatively tame next to Clarkson’s rally raid-style Bentley Continental GT and Hammond’s pirate-themed Mk3 Ford Focus RS, and was (spoiler alert) surprisingly the most resilient of the lot, making it to the end of the trip without a single breakdown.
So if this is the car from the show, where are all the silly off-road bits? Well, it’ll come as little surprise to learn that there were in fact two cars. And it was the all-terrain version that allegedly came first, as Amazon had asked Caterham to cobble one together for the show. While the car was in build, a near-identical 310R arrived at one of its dealers. This car had a black nose, which was mirrored on the off-road version before the two were bundled up and flown to Madagascar for filming.
Once the special had been shot, the two 310Rs returned home to Caterham, with the ‘normal’ version eventually winding up in private hands. It did, however, receive a number of subtle modifications prior to sale, including the switch to part silver, part black 13-inch wheels and the nosecone from a 420R race car. Mechanically, though, it’s identical to the regular 310R, meaning 155hp from a 1.6-litre Ford Sigma engine and a five-speed manual gearbox. And with just 540kg to shift along, the claimed 4.8-second 0-62mph time is certainly believable.
Performance is never in question with a Seven, mind. What you’re getting here is a superb little road racer with one almighty story to tell. It’s probably the most well travelled Caterham road car there is, and has likely racked up more views through its The Grand Tour appearance than any of its Formula 1 cars ever did while trundling around at the back of the pack. The asking price is £30,995, which is about on par for a 310R with less than 10k miles on the clock. What a brilliant little piece of motoring TV history you’re getting in return, and the basis for a cracking off-road build coming to think of it...
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