This just in:

Hello all,

Well, just as I thought we had had winter, and were heading for spring, the rain came down! I sincerely hope it stops before the All British Day, but in the meantime it put a bit of a dampener on the Shannons Classic out at Eastern Creek/Sydney Motorsport Park on 17th, which is a great shame after all the effort that goes into the organising of the event.

The day before however, we had almost perfect conditions for the Morgan round of the CSCA sprints, and on the Brabham circuit too, some blisteringly fast times were pumped out, about which, more from Mike elsewhere!

Sadly for me, my day came to an alarmingly grinding halt as I went down a gear at turn 10 (or whatever number it is now on the Brabham circuit – the right-hander into the final linked corners onto the straight) and lost the clutch – turns out my brand new Exedy clutch has shredded itself which is both surprising and rather boring, as it means the Elise has had to usurp the Eleven on the hoist while I drop the gearbox. Huge thanks to Syd for getting me home, and to Mike and Pete for their help in the fight with the gearbox – not a job for the Impatient!

And while on the thanks, a big thank you to Mike Basquil for hosting us at his place for this month’s General Meeting, and for his enthusiatic review of the Phillip Island 6 Hour; it sounds as though it was a great event, and many congratulations to the LCV team for placing 5th overall – a top effort! We should see if we can get another team organised for next year…

Now, on to stuff happening!

The new CLA website is in development, so I hope we will be able to show you work in progress for comments and feedback shortly. Seth Reinhardt is doing a fantastic job, and will be taking over the running of the site, so please make sure you send him photos, links to stuff you like, items for sale, articles for publication, news stories, etc as you come across them.

The purpose of the new site is to act as a springboard to other Lotus stuff, a reference site, and generally to provide a more current and up-to-date view on CLA and our activities.

However, it will only succeed with your involvement and feedback!

Evan and James are preparing an Expression of Intent for the CLA overalls – we hope to have the sample available for you to view at the AGM on Tuesday 9th September, so please come along, and if you like them, we will be taking firm orders! If you can’t make it on the night, we can take orders by email too – more details to follow.

And on the subject of new, we have recently commissioned Zed to update the CLA logo, so you will start to see the updated version around the traps – on the overalls, on the new website etc… it is not radically different to the old one, just updated a bit for the 21st century, and in alignment with the updates to the Lotus logo.

As I mentioned, the AGM has come around again – where does the time go?! We will have a reasonably busy agenda as there is lots happening or happened that I would like your views and thoughts on. So please come along to Shannons in Frederick St, Artarmon on Tuesday 9th for 7pm – come early to have a browse around the cars lining up for sale in the next auction!

Please let Elliott or me know if there is a topic you would like added to the agenda. And Elliott will be publishing the nomination forms if you would like to be on the Committee – please do put up your hand if you would like to be involved – we are an inclusive church, with plenty of stuff to keep everyone occupied! And a voluntary organisation is only as good as its volunteers, so if you want to know what it involves, feel free to collar me or any of the Committee for an informal, no-obligation chat!

I was over in Perth late last month and caught up with some of the crew there – many thanks to Eddie and Vicky for continuing to grow the level of activity both social and motorsport. Similarly David’s report elsewhere on activities in the ACT show that there is plenty going on. The new website calendar will allow much greater visibility and publication of all the interstate activities.

Speaking of which you will hopefully have noticed an increased level of noise around the Lotus 2015 Nationals in the Barossa Valley over the weekend of 2-5 October; accommodation is booking up fast, and the L2015 Committee will have the event site up and running for bookings very shortly. It is shaping up to be another fabulous event, with all that the Barossa has on offer, so I look forward to seeing you there!

John Barrass is busy drumming up interest in Tasmania, joining in with the existing car activities and starting to develop a core of Lotus lovers on the Apple Isle; it must be about time for another Tour of Tassie don’t you think?

And last but by no means least, in case it has slipped your mind, there is Eggs Benedict down at Ebony Hall on Sunday 28th September – bookings absolutely essential, so email Anne on anne_blackwood at hotmail.com and make sure you don’t dip out!

I think that’s about it – I’m sure I have forgotten something important, so come along on the 9th to find out what it was!

In the meantime, have fun, stay safe, upright and on the blackstuff.

Pip pip,
Ashton

The action-packed August 2014 edition of our monthly newsletter Lotus Notes, a joint initiative between all the Lotus Clubs of Australia, has been published and is making its way to Club Lotus Australia members.

This month’s features include:

• EMR and Sunshine Coast Hinterland Day Run GOME 2014 – Madrid-Vila Real-Madrid
• The Europa Mann
• MSCA Phillip Island – July
• “Get yourself a hobby”

And that’s just for starters! Members can download the full edition from the ‘Members‘ page.

And non-members can hit this link to join the Club and take part in our journey to bring love and Lotuses to the world.

Afternoon all!

Just when I thought I had everything organised, knew what was going where in the garage, what I was planning to do to the Elan, work needed on the Elise, and all the projects on the house under control, it all got thrown into a cocked hat! See the initial musings on my latest madness, the purchase of the Tuft Lotus Eleven, elsewhere … suffice to say, I have something of a project on my hands! Many, many thanks to Bruce Mansell and Warwick Bisley for entrusting the car to me, and I hope I will do them and the car proud.

Well, what’s a garage for in the middle of winter if not a project? So I can hardly complain, and it is a thing of almost unmatched beauty (particularly when finished), so this is the start of the journey – bear with me!

Elsewhere in the world of Lotus, planning is well underway for the next nationals, Lotus 2015 in the beautiful Barossa Valley in South Australia over the weekend of 2nd – 5th October next year; accommodation bookings are already open (full details at www.lotus2015.weebly.com) and filling up quite fast! Judging by the conversations I had with Ian and Andrew at the recent SSC day, it is setting up to be an outstanding event, so I look forward to seeing lots of you there!

And for those lucky enough to have been over in Europe for some of their summer, there has been plenty of interest – Goodwood Festival of Speed was on in late June, and Goodwood Revival is coming up on 12-14 September – if you’ve never been to one or the other (or ideally both!) make sure you put them on your bucket list.

July has been a cold one, at least here in NSW it has – which is good for clean running engines, but does require a bit more wrapping up of the extremities! As I was reminded on the way to Cars and Coffee a couple of weeks ago – the heater in the Elan is about as much use as the one in the Elise, so I found myself (carelessly gloveless) with my hands under the dash at any red lights! But the showing was outstanding – and not just Lotuses, but the increasingly wide array of unusual and interesting cars from the 40’s through to current models – if you haven’t been you should come along – it’s gazetted on the first Sunday of the month, so your Historic-plated car has a great excuse to come out to play!

August starts to get busy on the social and diary front, so make sure you have got all the dates in yours (and have applied for tickets where necessary), particularly as the date for the All British Day at Kings has changed from 31st to 24th August; the weekend before is the Shannons Classic on the Sunday (17th), preceded by the next round of the CSCA Supersprints on the Brabham Circuit at SMP on the Saturday (16th) – and all that starts off with our General Meeting, kindly hosted by Mike Basquil in his shed at 17 Booyong Avenue, Lugarno 2210.

Eggs Benedict bookings are now being taken by Anne, for Sunday 28th September – get your booking done now, as forgetting to do so will preclude involvement – need I say more? Anne is at anne-blackwood at hotmail.com

As our illustrious combined magazine continues to go from strength to strength, we need more CLA contributions! Please share your photos (as high a quality as you can manage so they print well!) and a few words describing what was happening, and get it to Tom by the middle of the month – it’s a shame if our friends north south and west read in here about nothing going on! So hands up who’s prepared to write up the events for August? And if you have a project, let’s hear about it – no matter how stagnant it has become – who knows, writing about it might inspire you to get it moving again!

As an aside, for anyone else who runs a Gen 1 Mini Cooper S as a daily driver, I cannot recommend highly enough a few little mods I undertook, with some kind help from Barry Mather and Paul Hardy, last weekend; we put a 15% undersized supercharger pulley on the Eaton MP45, installed a CAI, and undertook what is euphemistically referred to as the “one-ball mod” to the exhaust (the standard exhaust has two silencer boxes – you can by-pass one, and it frees up the exhaust without affecting noise levels) – these three little mods (and about 5 hours of work) have transformed the car – well worth it – let me know if you want to try it!

OK, enough from me, have a fun month, and enjoy the perfect winter weather we seem to be having. I look forward to seeing you out there at some point.

In the meantime, keep safe, upright and on the black stuff!

Pip pip,
Ashton