This morning dawned distinctly wet and miserable, which was in stark contrast to the 36 degrees we had yesterday. Thanking goodness I put the hard top on the Elan last night, we headed into the city for CARnivale, the annual Australia Day automotive celebration held in Macquarie St between Hyde Park and the harbour. Generally there are car clubs from all over Sydney and the environs represented, and this year we decided to try for a Club Lotus presence.
Given that we have never to my knowledge had a group entry, I wasn’t sure how many cars we would get to participate, and in the end we had what the examiners at school might have graded “a promising start” – three Elans and a Europa. It was supposed to be four Elans, but the Prince of Darkness struck yesterday, and Evan Jones was unable to persuade the genie back in the bottle, so this morning, Stephen Palmer’s Sprint, Marcelo Viapiana’s Europa, Ed Holly’s S1 Elan (driven by Graeme White as Ed was bringing the Eleven coming too) and my S2 lined up in the Domain car park, stuffed a quick sausage-in-a-roll and a cup of tea down courtesy of Granville Rotary Club, and lined up to head into Macquarie St in the pouring rain.
We were the last cars to arrive (and many thanks to Simon Kalis for waiting all that time in the rain to photograph our arrival!), and soon after we got lined up and put the Lotus flags up (thanks to Lotus Australia and Simply Sports Cars for the loan!) the public were swarming around, asking questions, and trying to keep dry under umbrellas.
A quick wander up the line of cars showed that we were in great company – everything from a Lamborghini Spada to a glorious 1929 Rolls Royce – and there were also a few other Lotuses in evidence – Peter Cohan’s pretty Elan S3 from up the coast, and a Lotus Cortina I think I’ve seen at Cars and Coffee – and that was before we got to the HSRCA, where Ed Holly had his beautiful S2 Eleven, Daniel Bando had his elegant Type 51, and Jim Davidson had brought along his stunning Elan S2 race car.
It should also be mentioned that over at Doulton House where the Concours D’Elegance guys were holding their Best of the Best event, there was also a great Lotus representation, with a couple of cars from SSC (including the Exige V6 Cup car), and Murray Lund and his Elise, which took away the second place in the Modern category – not a bad effort for turning up at no minutes notice – well done Murray!
Very grateful thanks are due to all those who turned up despite the rain, and for hanging around all day – I hope this is the start of something great – next year it’d be great to have ten cars there!
Ashton Roskill
Enjoy these shots from the day thanks to Simon Kalis.
These shots thanks to Syd Reinhardt.
And these thanks to Ashton Roskill.
