USA total owners count?

[Vovchandr]

There is an old video of Caterham where they say they import about ~50 units a year to USA.

 

I would have thought that numbers would have increased with popularity but Road & Track is building one and they reference that there are 21 sales "this year".

 

Makes me wonder if you had to guess where would you put ownership total for the cars in the states?

 

If we were to estimate ~50 a year on average over the last ~40 years (less in earlier, more in the latter), that would put us at about ~2000.

 

[Taber10]

There is an old video of Caterham where they say they import about ~50 units a year to USA.

 

I would have thought that numbers would have increased with popularity but Road & Track is building one and they reference that there are 21 sales "this year".

 

Makes me wonder if you had to guess where would you put ownership total for the cars in the states?

 

If we were to estimate ~50 a year on average over the last ~40 years (less in earlier, more in the latter), that would put us at about ~2000.

 

In 2007 I heard the figure of 30 a year, and that seemed very high. 2000 total in the US seems awfully high. Just my uneducated opinion though.......

Edited January 13, 2020 by Taber10
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[Sean]

According to my meticulous calculations, there are very nearly 1,283 Caterhams in the USA. Plus or minus approximately 1,200 units.

[scannon]

My copy of road and track arrived today and has that article in post #1. I've known about the R & T build for quite awhile but was pledged to not speak about it.

 

I've known Josh and his father Ross Robbins for about 15 years. Ross is involved in the new business. I visited their shop a few weeks ago and was impressed with their clean but well set up operation. The place was full of Caterhams in various stages of completion. There are stacks of Caterham parts as they start to build an inventory of new parts.

 

I think many on this forum have met Ross at LOGS and other events and through the books he wrote about his adventure/misadventures with Sevens and other Lotus cars. He sold his own long time Lotus 7 to Josh and it was in the shop looking like new.

 

Josh told me they have sold 8 Caterhams since they became Rocky Mountain Caterham a few months ago.

 

I wish them well in their new business.

 

Being around so many Caterhams in the shop made me yearn for the SV I built and owned for about 14 years.

[Vovchandr]

Going by the butt-stimator I'd say that 500 seems too low but 1000 (averaging 20 a state) seems too high. Not a crazy number for major states like NY or California but considering for it to be an average many states would need more than 20 to offset the North Dakota type states with the count of 1? 2? Which doesn't seem reasonable.

[SCse7en]

So the Road+Track article is about a build going on at Rocky Mountain Caterham? Looks like I need to find the magazine and buy it.

Glad to hear that Ross and his son are involved with RMC-can only mean good news for the rest of us!

[Croc]

Going by the butt-stimator

 

I don't even want to know...

 

 

I'd say that 500 seems too low but 1000 (averaging 20 a state) seems too high.

 

 

I never believed the Caterham sales claims of 50 a year. When you pushed into the detail it included deliveries from prior year orders plus undelivered orders - so there was some miscounting going on. There were some years they sold a lot and some years where they sold none. Source for that were a few conversations late in the life of the old RMSCi ownership plus some Caterham HO discussions using my contacts.

 

So if Caterham was selling for 30 years and some years sold 0 and some years sold 25-30 then there are probably 400 +/- 100 out there. Add a few imports of over 25 year cars. I would be surprised if the population gets over 500 cars in the States.

 

One data point known is that there are 34 CSR chassis in the USA (soon to be 35) - there is a registry for those specific Caterhams.

[scannon]

So the Road+Track article is about a build going on at Rocky Mountain Caterham? Looks like I need to find the magazine and buy it.

Glad to hear that Ross and his son are involved with RMC-can only mean good news for the rest of us!

 

The build is happening near Knoxville, Tennessee. The pictures in the article were taken at the shop in Colorado. The build will be by R & T staffers with Sam Smith and Zach Bowman heading the project.

 

Forgot to put the link to Rocky Mountain Caterham in my previous post.

 

http://www.rockymountaincaterham.com/

[Vovchandr]

There is a quip at the back of the article

 

"Drop a line to RT&@roadandtrack.com if you've got a Seven-friendly track or street event we should check out."

 

Should we reach out to them about NJMP event? It would be neat to see the group shot in a magazine.

[Croc]

Josh and Ross have the details. This is their idea so I prefer they keep control of the communications with R&T for consistency of marketing message.

 

The NJMP event is likely too late in 2020 to coincide with the plans for this R&T car - unfortunate but thats how it is.

[BruceBe]

Given the production lead-times, I'm sure that sales have been double-counted on occasion - e.g. credit the sale in year X, and credit it again in year X+1 when the vehicle arrives. Sam exercised some poetic license with a few details in that article.

 

In our experience, as a dealer for 8+ years, production lead times have been the #1 sales inhibitor, putting aside a particular period of time when retail pricing became insane.

 

Cheers,

-Bruce