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Westfield |
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| Country |
UK |
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| Parent |
- |
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| Subsidiaries |
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| Brands |
Westfield |
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| Location | Headquarters and factory: Kingswinford, UK |
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| Sales figures |
Approx. 150 cars a year (as of
2017) 2005 production: 426 cars |
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| Introduction | This is another small British sports car specialist focusing
on road-legal track cars. Like Caterham, Westfield is best known for
building cars based on the classic design of Lotus Seven, although it
had no rights of its intellectual property. In recent years it also
builds its own track cars, the XTR series. |
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| Brief History |
Westfield started as a garage in 1982 by Chris Smith. Its
earliest car was a replica of Lotus Eleven race car, but soon it moved
to kit cars based on the classic Lotus Seven. Having been sued by
Caterham, which owns the rights of Seven, it modified the appearance of
its cars to differentiate from the original. Many of them employed more
powerful engines and independent rear suspensions to better Caterhams.
For example, its best known model, SEiGHT, was fitted with a Rover V8
in the lightweight chassis to provide giant-killing performance.
Another famous model FW400 employed carbon-fiber body panels to achieve
a power-to-weight ratio of 475hp per ton. In the other end, Westfield
produced the flyweight Megablade, Megabird and Megabusa using Japanese
superbike engines.  Left: Megabusa (2001); Right: XTR2 (2001) In 2001, Westfield started building its second line, the XTR series track cars. The open cockpit machines were road-legal in UK but they were designed primarily for tracks. |