ZERO TO HERO?

Great British Sports Cars (GBS to its friends) isn't a household name, but that could change. We visit its HQ and drive the Zero, its modern take on a Lotus Seven, to find out if it deserves a bigger audience

- JAMES TAYLOR

A CONFESSION, DEAR READER. I KNEW very little about GBS before visiting the company for this story and getting into one of its cars. I vaguely knew the name, and its association with Lotus/Caterham Seven-style kit cars (also offered as fully factory-built cars) - but not much more than that.

What have I discovered? That it has existed since 2007, since when it has built and sold more than 1000 examples of its Zero sports car. It has dealers in America, Germany, Sweden and Norway and has sold cars as far afield as Australia, New Zealand and Chile. It designs and manufactures the vast majority of the Zero's components in-house, including its own adjustable monotube dampers. And the engineering side of the business is kept busy with consultancy work for aeronautics, motorsport and beyond. A visit to find out more felt like a good idea.

GBS stands for Great British Sports Cars, and its Ollerton factory sits amid pretty, rolling countryside, and some nice roads, in Nottinghamshire. Its story began when it acquired the assets of the Robin Hood kit car company; something of a double-edged sword in that it came with a sizeable customer base and parts business but the cars weren't of the standard GBS wanted to be making. Instead it launched the Zero - still a Seven-alike sports car, but a clean-sheet design which went on sale in 2007.

'It's about taking the Lotus Seven concept and bringing it right up to date,' says director Richard Hall. The Zero has doublewishbone independent suspension all-round and is longer, wider and roomier than a traditional Seven. It still has a steel tubular spaceframe but with stressed aluminium sections making it akin to a semi-monocoque. Hall says it's more than two-thirds stiffer than an equivalent Caterham.