Yesterday, I spent some time in Lotus Nirvana!
As you might recall from the posts below, yesterday was the first recent Lotus meet here in Portugal. I did some of the background work for it but it was really Manuel Pinheiro (afternoon drive) and Pedro Aroso (morning and lunch) that did most of the work… and it was great!
I could barely sleep the night before. I literally woke up every hour and a half, until, at 5.30, I decided to call it a night. I ended up browsing the internet up to 6.30 and then went to get the Lotus. I kid you not, the car has almost 7000 kilometers on it, I take it out at least once a week, normally twice, and yet whenever I am walking towards my garage, I feel a giddiness that can only be compared to the one I felt when I got to spend an afternoon with my girlfriend in college, and her parents were not at home :-)
I drove to Arruda dos Vinhos, to pick up Zé Rodrigues (JCPR from AHO). I was there a couple of minutes later, because I went to fill up on gas and there were a good dozen of cab drivers doing the same and it was the gas station clerk’s first day :-O
We met with my good friend Zé Gil, the biggest Lotus fanatic I know, in Aveiras. He was driving a small VW Polo coupé (his Elan M100 is not repaired yet). I told him to go in front because he said his car could not go much faster than 120 km/h.... yeah right :-) I ended up really having to push it to be able to keep up with him. We had a nice quiet drive up to Porto. Where my GPS decided to take us through some less canonical routes. OK… so we get to Bela Cruz and the first thing I see is this gorgeous, beautiful, delicious little car. As with most Lotus, the pics of this car do not do it justice… not in a million years. I was totally drooling.
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
I followed the little Europa to a gas station and find out Pedro Aroso was driving it. The car is beautiful and quite lower than mine :-O
We were joined by an Elan. As we were chatting, a bunch of Elises passed by :-D
We all drove down to Bela Cruz and parked. There were a bunch of cars there already. A bunch of members from AHO stopped by to say hi… quite a pleasant surprise. We checked out some of the old school Esprits and also the most hard core Elise in the group, which driven by a really fast driver (it even had a PerformaceBox installed!). We were later joined by a Porsche 997 Turbo whose beauty was overshadowed by a certain orange Lotus ;-)
Everyone chatted for a while and then we drove away. We just stopped for a quick group photo in the roundabout just before leaving.
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
The drive to Ofir where we were going to have lunch was great. I went with the front drivers. We were all following an Elan S3 that was pushing it really hard. It was fun to see the tiny car ahead driving past Porche Cayennes and other SUVs. We all took a moderate rhythm. The S1 Elise had yet to be seen, and Zé Rodrigues, who is seriously thinking about buying one was sort of disappointed. Imagine our joy when we saw Rui in his S1 overtaking us!
When we got to Ofir there was a little not soo good surprise in store when we got to Ofir. The road to the restaurant was like taken out of a moonscape and unfortunately one of the Europas ruptured its fuel tank.
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Photo Credit: Rui Coelho
Lunch was pretty good. I was sitting in next to the sales rep from Lotus, Manuel Pinheiro, and in front of a service guy from Lotus, José Rodrigues and Rui (the owner of the S1). Good conversation at lunch, although to much Ferrari talk for my own liking :-) The service guy told me that he loved my car and that it was the only one that would steer him away from an AM Vanquish. He told me he had done the presales inspection and the 1000 mile service on it and that it looked great. A real enthusiast!
Lotus paid our lunch. It was really nice of them (we didn’t know they were going to do it)! The service in the restaurant was also great. We were more people than they were counting on and still they were able to get some more tables in a snap.
Off we went to the drive and I let me tell you that Manuel picked some wonderful roads. These were the most challenging roads I have ever driven on with a quick succession of hairpins, fast sweeps and short hooks (map of the whole trip). The asphalt was great as well and the visibility was superb. On the first leg (map), I hadn’t warmed up properly and didn’t do a great job. Ended up last. On the second one (map), I pushed the car much harder. I used all of what I had learned with R_U_Local’s teachings (1,2,3) and was able to do a very quick and very clean run with very few mistakes. One of the S3 Elans did the first leg with us. Props to the driver! On the third run (map), José Rodrigues who was my passenger, got a severe case of motion sickness and I had to take it slow. Zé’s company’s is more valuable to me than a delicious road, but it was an insane uphill climb (nor for me, I took it slow). Well, Zé might as well have saved my car because one of the cars lost control and spun and only sheer luck prevented a bigger accident. Fortunately the car involved didn’t suffer much and everyone was allright.
Photo Credit: Joao Cunha
Photo Credit: Joao Cunha
The scenery from the top of the mountain was breathtaking.
Photo Credit: Joao CunhaI drove down to Spain with Manuel and a Rui Coelho in his beautiful Rover S2 Elise and then down to Porto. Zé Gil picked his car and he drove down with Zé Rodrigues and me to Mealhada, where we had dinner. Arrived in Lisbon after a 927 km trip of pure pleasure. I was in my car or talkin about it for more than 14 hours and I only spent 2.3 tanks of gasoline. Isn’t the Lotus a great car!
I forgot to say that Manuel and I did a couple of drags from stoplights - proper 'fast and furious' style. The first one was only a dozen meters. In the second one, he pulled away a little bit at the start (probably did a standing start or almost) but then my supercharger kicked in and his car got a bit smaller in the rearview mirror ;-)
It was a superb day out!
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