You Can Get A Caterham With A Horse Next Year

In its 50-plus year lifespan, the Caterham Seven has sourced power from all over the place – Vauxhall, Ford, Rover, Suzuki, and even a bespoke and entirely terrifying supercharged V8 made up of two superbike engines smushed together. Now, there’s another name to add to that list: Horse.

That, should you need a reminder, isn’t literally a thing that goes neigh, but the new powertrain tie-up between Renault, Chinese giant Geely and Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco. Focusing on combustion and hybrid powertrains, we’ve just had the chance to sample some of its earliest work in the Dacia Bigster, and we came away decently impressed.

That powertrain, though, was a hybrid with a remarkably old-school 1.8-litre nat-asp four handling the combustion side of the equation. The Horse power that Caterhams are set to gain next year is a bit different: it’s a little 1.3-litre turbo four-cylinder, codenamed HR13 and producing 130bhp and 130lb ft of torque.

While all this info’s come straight from the Horse’s mouth, it’s keeping quiet on whether this engine is, in fact, an evolution of Renault and Nissan’s existing 1.3-litre turbo engine that’s been used in all manner of unremarkable cars from both manufacturers plus Mercedes. Regardless, though, it gets new bits like a delta-shaped cylinder head to save weight and space, plus exhaust manifolds cast directly in the head to improve turbo response.

For now, the engine’s place in the Caterham range will be a bit of a one Horse town, as it’s only been confirmed for the company’s Academy race cars from 2026. Hold your Horses, though, because a few years ago, the 1.6-litre Ford engine that powered the Super 1600, 170 and 210 derivatives of the Seven, plus the current Academy racers, went out of production.

It stands to reason, then, that following on from its appearance in the Academy car, it could find its way into a new entry-level Seven for the road, too. At any rate, the Academy racers have long been road-legal anyway, so this new one could be a bit of a dark Horse among the Caterham range.

Anyway, we’ll stop with the puns now. It’s starting to feel like we’re beating a dead… oh.