GRRC Garage: Caterham 310 S – autumn

Ok, in reality you knew this was coming, we knew this was coming, people who have no internet connection in Mongolia knew this was coming the moment we said we were living with a Caterham 310 S all the way into October...

It got cold.

The moment the hottest summer for decades gave way to, well, a standard autumn, the temperature was going to drop and I was going to be setting off for work with the temperature gauge on my phone reading in single figures.

There are two sides to this story – the first with the roof on, the second without. With the roof on it’s almost too warm sometimes in our Caterham, fortunately you can position the doors so that they provide a rather lovely breeze into the car, circulating air and bringing the ambient temperature back down (to too cold, and so the “open until too cold, close until too hot” game begins). Roof off and it’s just cold. But since it’s nice and warm at the end of each day you take the roof off and drive home feeling like all is good in the Caterham world.

Of course what’s actually happened is you’ve been lulled into a false sense of security by our climate, the next morning you will get up, don eight layers of clothing and still arrive without sensation in four of your fingers. The solution? Just wrap up warm. Stick warm hat on, glove yourself up, wrap yourself in a big coat and pretend you’re going out on a winter walk, it’s lovely. The only point where it is the Caterham’s issue and not just the driver’s boneheadedness is when the heater coughs out a small hint of warmth onto your legs and you start to wonder if you should just turn it off.

It's just part of open air back-to-basics motoring. Sometimes the weather is not going to be perfect, so sometimes it’s you that needs to prepare, not the car. Anyway, my other solution has been to give it to a colleague of mine who will be writing about it soon.

MPG this week: 32.2

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