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The Caterham Seven Sprint is a perfect retro-style British roadster

A Caterham Seven oozes retro style. Modern engineering may mean the car no longer shares any parts with its original Lotus counterpart, but one look at the little roadster and it's easy to see the car's heritage. Caterham loves pumping out variants of the Seven, and the 2016 Goodwood Revival seemed like the perfect place to announce the latest version, the throwback Caterham Seven Sprint. Caterham calls the Seven Sprint a design "that was seemingly planned in the mid-1960s but never launched." It's apt then that the company is using it to kick off its "60 Years of the Seven" celebrations. The Seven Sprint is based off the European-only 160 model, meaning it's powered by an 80-hp turbocharged three-cylinder Suzuki engine. While the bonkers Seven 620 R may be the biggest and baddest Caterham available, the bare bones Seven 160 just feels more appropriate here. There are a number of retro styling touches throughout the car. The limited edition Seven Sprint comes wrapped in one of six colors originally offered by Lotus in 1966 and 1967. The Chassis is powder-coated grey, just like the Series 2 Lotus Seven. The cream-colored wheels feature polished hubcaps, while the interior features a wood-trimmed wheel and the interior is trimmed in a wonderful shade of red. The body has been slightly reworked to look more like the original Lotus designed car. Mechanically, not much has changed. Power from the Suzuki three is fed through a five-speed manual. Some of the suspension bits are similar to Colin Chapman's original design, but that's true of the standard 160. The car should be just as much of a riot as any other Caterham, just packed to the gills with style. The Seven Sprint is available only as a fully-complete factory car. It's unknown if any of the 60 produced will make it to the US. Prices in the UK start at GBP27,995, or about $37,000. Related Video: Featured Gallery Caterham Sprint Image Credit: Caterham Cars Design/Style Lotus Automakers Convertible caterham seven

eBay Find of the Day: 2000 Lotus 340R, claimed only street-legal example in US

These days most of the news out of Lotus comes when it releases a lighter or faster version of the Elise, Exige or Evora. However, the stripped-out, Elise-based 340R might already show the logical conclusion of that concept, despite coming out in 2000. Now, one of the 340 made is up for auction on eBay Motors, and the seller in Fort Lauderdale, FL, claims that it's the only street-legal example available in the US.
Lotus founder Colin Chapman always had an obsession with making his vehicles as light as possible, and the 340R adhered to that adage about as closely as a street car could in 2000. These minimalist roadsters eschewed opening doors, windows and a roof in the pursuit of cutting the fat off the brand's hardly portly Elise. The company's engineers also trimmed away the fenders to give their creation a semi-open wheel design that looked as wild when new as today. For the interior, they installed two racing buckets, and the most of the rest was left in bare metal, including the pedals. All of the changes reportedly brought the 340R down to around 1,545 pounds.
Power comes from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder with a five-speed manual gearbox. The 340R is available with 177 horsepower or a tuned 187-hp version from that mill, but the seller doesn't specify which one this is. It's still a pretty fresh car, though, with just 3,577 miles claimed on the odometer.

2015 Ram ProMaster City Tradesman First Drive [w/video]

From the perspective of a reviewer, there's a refreshing clarity to be hand when approaching a vehicle like a small commercial van. Where the inherent value equation for most vehicles is composed of both objective facts (price, fuel economy), and subjective opinions (looks, emotional response while driving), the reckoning of something like the new Ram ProMaster City is more straightforward. The light commercial van segment in the US has seen a remodel over the last half-decade, moving from paneled-over minivans to the versatile, economical, European-style boxes on wheels you see with increasing frequency today. Ford, Nissan and Chevrolet are all players here (though Chevy's City Express is essentially a rebadged version of Nissan's NV200), and though Ram's entry could be seen as late to the party, it also matches up very nicely in many of those straightforward areas of measure. Kindly, Ram brought along both the Nissan and the Ford for us to test alongside its new product, so we could get firsthand comparative impressions. The 2015 ProMaster City is roomier, more powerful and more maneuverable than its competition, though it trades those advantages for a higher price and a thirstier engine around town. We headed down to Texas where, between breaks for tacos and Topo Chicos, our goal was to see if Ram had created the new best box van in the US. Based on the already successful Fiat Doblo van from Europe, the baby ProMaster's visual transformation after its continental hop isn't radical. Ram has fitted a crosshair grille, new headlights and taillights, but largely the curvaceous, nose-forward styling remains the same. As we mentioned at the top: style is going to be very low on this list of priorities for a buyer of light commercial vans. Still, we'd rate the City as mid-pack for the options in the US; more attractive than the Nissan/Chevy twins and less so than the crisp Ford Transit Connect. (Though the optional five-spoke wheels of our test vehicle make it seem downright sporty in this group). Open the driver's side door and slide into the almost totally flat front seat, and any notion of "style" goes right out the window. Surfaces are almost exclusively black and gray, with workaday textures and frustratingly easy-to-scratch-plastics. This is a functional space though; trays, cubbies, cupholders and bins are far more numerous than you'd expect from a compact, two-seat cabin.