This just in:

Well hello everyone!

Thank you to all of you who attended the AGM recently at Shannons and for your continued support for your Committee and Club – I am delighted that we have the go-ahead to continue much as we were before, with the notable exception that Alastair Brown has decided to stand down as CMC delegate, after many years of close involvement with the Club, so our very grateful thanks go to him for all he has done in many capacities over the years.

Evan Jones will continue his good work to maintain our presence with the Council of Motor Clubs. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be present on the night due to work commitments in WA, so I would also like to take the opportunity to thank your Committee publicly for all the hard work which goes on behind the scenes and which most of you never see! Without their time and effort, you wouldn’t have the vibrant and enjoyable club events, motorsport or technical support which makes owning a Lotus such a joy.

I particularly want to thank the CLA Chapter representatives in WA (Eddie Lankhorst), ACT (David Leaney), Tasmania (John Barrass) and South Australia (Andrew Stevens) for re-establishing the Club in their respective states, and for the hard work they are all putting into giving local members such a wide variety of activities and opportunity to enjoy their cars – thank you all!

Financially the Club is in good shape, and grateful thanks, as ever, to Kris for keeping the books balanced. The combined newsletter goes from strength to strength, entirely thanks to Tom’s patience and commitment, so thank you Tom! Elliott continues to keep you all informed of what is going on, in spite of his significant workload, so my grateful thanks Elliott.

Thank you to our VP Anne, and to Maurice for representing the Club as our Public officer, and for keeping the Club Plates register legal and above board. Mike Basquil continues, swan-like as ever, to keep the water calm in the motorsport world, for which we are all most grateful. Mike Donnan is keeping eyes on you all and your attendance at events, thank you Mike! Keith has now got the Concours planning and execution so slick you would hardly begin to know how much effort goes into it, so thank you Keith! And our General Members Geoff, James, Rob and Barry continue to support all the social activity to ensure we have an active and varied calendar – thanks gents! Importantly, we also have a new Webmaster, Seth Reinhardt, who has taken on the task of developing and running our website, so welcome to Seth!

On which subject, by the time you read this the NEW Club Lotus Australia website will be live, and you will have received an email from Elliott with your authentication code to allow you to set up your personal account; this in turn allows you access to the Members section, where in future the Newsletter and other member-only materials will be posted. Other than this section, the rest of the site is intended to become a more active public face of the club, and to represent all we do. So please do send our webmaster, Seth, any and all material you would like posted up – that can be photos you took on a run with a few friends, anything you want to put up for sale, or events you would like in the calendar (particularly, it would be great to include interstate events on the calendar so members in all states can see what is going on).

For those of you that use Facebook as your way of keeping abreast of happenings, we have also established a page (search for Club Lotus Australia and it should come up!) and we will be cross-posting any news and current affairs to there (but probably NOT “for sale” items!)

This year’s wet winter weather has played havoc with social events, and for the first time since I can remember, the All British Day at Kings School had to be postponed, and then cancelled. This is a great shame, as it has historically been a central event in the calendar, but plans are already afoot to conduct our Concours d’Elegance at the Christmas Party on December 7th instead. Following the success of the location last year we will be going back to Tunks Park in Lane Cove National Park, so block out the diary for Sunday 7th December, and we very much look forward to seeing you there.

However, as I write this, the sun is finally shining for the second consecutive day, so I am quietly hopeful that we might be over the worst and into the Spring weather. I had the Elan out for a run yesterday and am delighted to report that she seems to have weathered the dull winter months in remarkably good form! The same sadly can’t be said for a number of barn-find cars which have come to light in recent months, but at least they are appearing, and hopefully will find new lives with new owners willing to put in the substantial effort to resurrect them. If anyone is after a Plus 2 project car, I know of one in central Sydney that needs a significant investment of time to bring her back to life!

October sees us visiting Grahame Burton’s Shed – Grahame has recently taken on the distributorship for AVO shocks, and will have his shock dynamometer (I hope that’s how it’s spelt!) operating on the night so we can understand a little more about the technicalities of shocks and corner weighting. His shed is at the rear of 97 Crinan St, Hurlstone Park; enter via Wallace Lane and, as there is no parking in the lane, park in the side streets.

October also has us at the next round of the CSCA sprints down at Wakefield on 26th, preceded by the Triumph Owners Club Driver Training Day on 25th. For anyone thinking of sprinting next year, or just interested to find out more, this is a great event to attend, as it gives you access to the track and lots of helpful types willing to share advice on car set up, preparation and all that comes with sprinting. I would encourage you to try it, and stay for the Sunday too, to join in the fun – last time I looked we already had 14 of the first 19 entrants in the field, so it should be a great weekend.

And please note in your diaries that for our General Meeting on 11th November we have been invited back to Bruce Mansell’s shed in Chatswood so I am looking forward to catching up with lots of you then too!

I think that’s enough from me – with the finer weather coming, you really want to be out in your car rather than reading about it!

Have fun, take care and keep it upright and on the black stuff.

Pip pip,
Ashton

Due to the cancellation of this year’s All British Day, our Club Lotus Australia Concours d’Elegance has been postponed until later this year.

In a concerted effort to mimic stereotypical British weather, Sydney has put on three or so weeks of continual heavy rain, leaving the grounds at Kings School too waterlogged to cope with the comings and goings of many British motorvehicles. The All British Day itself has therefore been cancelled for Sunday the 14th of September and will not be rescheduled. It will, however, make a triumphant, and hopefully less damp return in 2015.

This means that our Concours & Picnic will be postponed! The current plan is to combine the Concours with our annual Christmas Party & Picnic towards December 2014. We will advise arrangements in the near future, so stay tuned!

The collective minds of all of the Lotus Clubs of Australia have once again coalesced to create the magnificent magazine that is Lotus Notes, now on its way to members in its September 2014 edition.

This month’s features include:

• Canberra: Sunny Saturday Afternoon Drive
• Monaco Grand Prix 2014
• Formula One drive day at Circuit du Var AGS Formule 1
• Winton Festival of Speed 2014
• The Tuft Eleven Diatribes

And a whole lot more!

Members can download the September edition of Lotus Notes from the ‘Members‘ page. You’ll need to log in to your membership account.

And non-members can hit this link to become a member, and take part in all the fun and games!

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