Forget the Financial Times, Caterham will let you know when the recovery comes

NICK, Gordon and Dave might be tearing out their hair at the thought of a hung Parliament knackering Britain's economic recovery but I know it's already started - Caterham sales have gone up!

You could use what the three party leaders tell you to work out where Britain's beleagured bankers are headed but despite the success of our Champion twitter feed I still prefer to use the petrolhead method for working out all things monetary. I understand entirely if you'd rather stick to the FT but I promise, the sales figures of small sports car makers are perfect for predicting which way the country's heading. It's good news.

Take TVR. Anyone who reads Autocar too much might have blamed bad Russian management, slightly suspect reliability records or just the ongoing reputation for a Chimaera to kill you mid-corner for the Blackpool company going under, but it went under in 2007, just as the credit bubble burst. I reckon the economy did it.

You might have already read about the quandry the rest of the car industry's in but we'll leave Ford and GM out of this one - they were losing money before the credit crunch, so the world's economy collapsing since then just made a bad problem worse. VW and Toyota are equally enormous as companies go, but conversely they're on a roll right now.

Small sports car companies are far better arbiters of the economy because a Caterham, Morgan or Lotus aren't things you buy because you need them; they're fun things you buy because you got a bonus at work and fancy the wind in your hair on the way into work. So you won't buy them if things are tough.

But Caterham says its rise in sales, mainly on the back of madcap motors like the R500, pictured, is so overwhelming that it's actually had to ramp up production at its Surrey plant to cope, and it's the same story over at Lotus, Morgan and most of the other plucky car firms whose entire budgets wouldn't keep GM in business for a week.

After being bored solid with stories of petrol costing £1.22 a litre, depressed with electric cars which look apologetic in their anonymous styling and frustrated with Honda's refusal to let me test drive the new CR-Z, it's great to see some sunny optimism in the motoring world.

Gordon/Nick/Dave (delete as appropriate) please don't ruin it...