While Caterham Cars bought the rights to the Lotus Seven from Lotus, Chris Smith set up a rival company in 1982 and built kits with very similar styling and construction. Caterham threatened legal action over design rights in the late 1980s, and the case was settled out of court, with Westfield changing and improving its design. Westfields still look much like Caterhams, but use glass-fibre bodywork, as Lotus did on its later cars, rather than aluminium.
Westfield pioneered features such as independent rear suspension and a wider chassis that other Seven-style makers later adopted, and offered a huge choice of drivetrains, from Ford Sierra and Mazda MX-5 donor kits to motorcycle-engined Megabusas and the Honda S2000-powered MegaS2000. At its height it was producing about 450 SEi and XTR chassis a year. In the first series of the BBC’s Top Gear, a Westfield XTR2 driven by the Stig lapped the test track faster than the record-holding Pagani Zonda.
Westfield became part of Potenza Sports Cars in 2006, which also took over GTM, and in 2009 became the first niche manufacturer to gain European Small Series type approval. After going into administration in 2022 it was bought by Westfield Chesil and moved from Kingswinford to Bicester, and that company went into administration in April 2026.
