Caterham's New Creation Is Its Lightest Yet, By Far

These days, if you want something small and exciting, there aren't very many options, although we would recommend the excellent Toyota GR86. You could also go the extreme route and opt for a Caterham Seven, as its cars are always light and always fun. The British automaker's latest release, however, is intended to be lighthearted and funny. We're not even going to attempt duping you into believing that this is a real thing, as the thumbnail alone has already made it obvious that this is a sweet, innocent April Fools' joke. To understand it fully, you should know that Caterham is renowned, not only for building cars but for sending you the pieces to build its cars yourself. Hence the "self-assembly snack kit" you see below.

The jovially written press release that unpacks the joke is littered with clever lines and self-aware silliness: "Cater-ham [get it?] Sevenses strip the needless faff away from the eating experience, allowing buyers to enjoy the pure, unalloyed exhilaration of ham, cheese, and crackers. While the average Caterham kit car can contain over 870 separate parts, a pack of Cater-ham Sevenses needs just three."

The niche automaker jokes that the ham and cheddar creation echoes the brand's classic British heritage but that future offerings will reflect the diverse cuisines of some of Caterham's export markets. For example, "French buyers can look forward to ham and brie, Dutch customers to ham and gouda, Japanese owners to ham and Sakura and, in due course, shoppers in the USA will be able to purchase Cater-ham with a mini can of artificially flavored spray cheese."

"There's little chance of a pack of Sevenses adding lightness to anyone who consumes it," said Graham Macdonald, Caterham's Chief Executive Officer, "but by simplifying the snacking needs of our customers we leave them with more time to build and drive their beloved Caterham cars." As you can see, the shape of the snack is modeled after the silhouette of its actual products, but that's not something new. In fact, it's something that a much larger automaker actually did, and not as a joke either. Last month, Nissan revealed that it had worked with a Japanese snack company to create crackers in the shapes of its actual cars. For real.