Caterham, the British sportscar specialist, has developed an expensive beefed up version of its Seven, powered by a V8 engine.

The £115,000 RS Performance Seven develops 1,000bhp-per-tonne from its 2.4-litre and Caterham claims it will reach 0-62mph in less than three seconds.

Caterham has teamed with RS Performance, a niche engineering house, to create the car.

Each of the cars takes 12 weeks to build and features a traction and launch control to help keep the Seven RS Performance stuck to the road.

Ansar Ali, Caterham Cars managing director, said: “Caterham and Russell Savory have a long history, and this seemed a natural progression of that relationship and shared engineering philosophy.”