Students build Caterham, test it on Top Gear track

Extra-curricular activities. Great for the CV, but not exactly fun. That is, unless, you’re a pupil at Millfield School in Somerset – where students have built a Caterham Seven and tested it out on the Top Gear track.

The school runs a Caterham Car Club every year, selecting a team of aspiring engineers from its pupils to put the car together.

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They start in September, when Caterham delivers a chassis, an engine, 17 cardboard boxes and a 221-page instruction manual.

The group of students then have until the end of the school year to build the car.

This year’s final result, an Azure Blue Caterham Seven Roadsport 125, has now been completed and last week, a group of 19 staff, parents and pupils headed to Dunsfold to put the car through its paces.

Even the pupils, who won’t yet have driving licences, got to follow in the footsteps of the Stig on the Top Gear track – with many of them getting behind the wheel for the first time ever.

Is there a cooler place to learn to drive than in a Caterham on the Top Gear track? We don’t think so.

Regular viewers of Top Gear will recall an episode when the trio were tasked with building a Caterham Seven in the time it takes the Stig to drive one from Surrey to Scotland. The trio won, but only because the Stig was arrested three miles from the track.

Millfield School tells us that, after the car’s been built, it’s sent back to Caterham and exchanged for a fresh kit for the new school year. Shame, we reckon every school needs a shed full of Caterhams.

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Find out how much a used Caterham Seven costs on Auto Trader

On Bing: see pictures of the Caterham Seven

By motoringresearch.com