My apologies before I begin for the silence last month – by the time the Great Cape Rally finished on 7 September and I got home and worked out which way was up, it was too late to call it early September still! But there’s a wrap from the rally here if you are into that sort of thing.

As I write this, I am about to start my latest three-month license suspension. Yes, I know, stupid, and probably avoidable (although the speed at which one can lose it these days is almost as astonishing as the fines they now levy). So, unfortunately, I will be on Shank’s pony or my bicycle for the foreseeable future, rather than joining in the fun.

However, it did get me thinking about the possible upside (and prepare for some awesome man maths here). In the three months I am off the road, I will save more than $600 in petrol, $800 in insurance, and will avoid paying in the order of $200 of fines for whatever infractions the local HWP find for me (the last one was $3,350 for a faded number plate!) So, the government is losing GST and fine revenue, and I am better off to the tune of ~$1,600. Thank you, Mims (or whoever is our PM now – who cares?)

Anyway, ahead of losing it, I have been making maximum use of it. So yesterday I turned up at the St Ives cars and coffee to catch up with a great showing of cars. Sorry to miss some of you, but I caught one or two, and a load of other old friends, some of whom I’ve not seen in far too long (you know who you are if you are reading this!) It made me realise I need to get out more. Poor timing, I know!

At Saturday’s committee meeting, we agreed to gazette the St Ives Autobrunch, so all those on historic plates can go along without exhausting a day from your log book. So I hope to see even more of you there once I’m back in the fray in January.

We also confirmed plans for the AGM and Christmas Party this year. The Christmas party will be on Sunday 8th December, and held at the Royal Automobile Club in Macquarie St, Sydney.

As in prior years, we will be subsidising the tickets to the tune of $20, so a two-course lunch with tea and coffee is $55, with the added ambience of one of the oldest clubs in Australia, and one of the oldest motoring clubs in the world. So I hope to see lots of you there.

We have provisionally assumed around 50 attendees, so if you could mark your calendars now, and respond to the invitation as soon as possible, that’ll enable us to know which room is best suited to our needs at the club.

We also recognised the need to reconvene the motorsport committee in order to not only start planning for next year (and hopefully the full return of Wakefield Park (or One Raceway) to the calendar, but also to focus on what the shape of club motorsport and our involvement needs to be. If any of you would like to be more involved in that conversation, please let me know, and as soon as we can get a quorum, we will get that conversation underway.

Outside the immediate confines of the club, the world continues to progress (if you can call it that). I don’t mind admitting that the chaos and suffering in both the Middle East and Ukraine continues to sadden me and my thoughts are with all of you with friends and families caught up in the conflict and terror. Quite why grown men feel the need to behave this way is beyond me, but that’s too long a conversation for here.

In brighter news, most of the western governments have finally realised that their optimistic targets for the total electrification of cars by 2030, or even 2035, was at best thought-provoking, and at worst insane, and have started to work out what a world swamped by cheap Chinese EVs might look like alongside a continuing ICE industry.

To be honest, I am not sure where that leaves Lotus, and I suspect the continued relatively buoyant second hand market for our (late model in particular) cars suggests I am not the only one!

And the luckily inevitable readjustment back from the left-leaning woke insanity of the last few years is starting to result in more sensible conversations being able to be had in public. I was amused to see the reaction in Pitchbook to their sustainability survey this year. When asked “Which of the following contributed to the decision not to utilise ESG in your investment decisions?”, over 75% of VC and PE investors responded in the affirmative to “ESG is mostly baseless virtue signalling”. Finally, common sense is prevailing. Not that there’s much hope for the “male pale and stale” amongst us to recover the situation unfortunately – that ship has sailed.

And on that happy note, I will leave you with this fun photo of my Elite reflecting in the hubcap of a Citroen Avant at St Ives yesterday.

Stay safe, upright and mainly on the black stuff.

Pip pip,
Ashton