Caterham Cars had its best year in more than two decades with sales of its classic sports car, the Seven. The UK company received 667 Seven orders in 2017, up from 616 orders in 2016. It’s the British manufacturers second consecutive year of increased orders.

It may be over 50 years old in spirit, but the Seven will always be a work in progress. Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, would likely not have believed that his lightweight sportscar would last half a Century. The sales record in 2017 capped a significant 60th anniversary year for the Seven with the landmark moment being the 60 limited edition retro-racer Seven SuperSprints selling out in a record seven hours during the Goodwood Revival.

“The 60th anniversary of the Seven was always a year we intended to celebrate and reflect on our incredible heritage, but it has surpassed even our expectations,” said Graham Macdonald, Caterham’s Chief Executive Officer. “There’s no denying it’s a tough time for the automotive industry with uncertainty around Brexit and the continually evolving EU emission changes, WLTP, but that’s why it’s an even more exceptional achievement to secure the orders we have. A huge congratulations and personal thanks to the whole dealer network for the tireless work and dedication to the cause.”

The Seven is available in 30 countries around the world including the United States but is currently not available in Canada. While the bulk of overall sales came from the UK dealer network (43%), there were record-breaking performances from dealers across the globe including the French market claiming its best performance ever, and an increase of 35% compared to 2016. Another exciting step for Caterham in 2017 was the introduction of Latin American regional distributor Global X-Sports, meaning for the first time in Caterham’s history there is a distributor for the whole Latin America region.