Blat last night

Went for a blat last night in Sintra. The road was great, although it seemed to be a bit damp. Had a great time, the car behaved wonderfully. I made a couple of mistakes but the Exige S is a really forgiving car. When I was reading online fora prior to getting the car, I thought it would be a bit twitchy and bite back a lot, but that is not how the car is at all. It is really very forgiving. Hopefully, there will be one more opportunity to practice this weekend... :-)

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The left-hand front turn signal... again

I went to pick up the Lotus from the garage yesterday to give it a wash and on my way home, the left hand front turn signal flew out of its casing. As you might recall, this happened already. The first time, the top latch keeping it in place broke, so the signal moved but it did not fly out. Now the bottom one broke and the signal flies out all the time. Had to tape in place :-(

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Blat today

Hadn't driven the Exige for the past couple of weeks (I was away on business). Took it out today. Delicious as usual. I really missed it. I was bummed by the trip though. The road I was going to play in was littered with leaves and gravel :-(

No fun in the twisties at all!

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Blat next dawn

OK... I'm leaving for a business trip tomorrow and the thought of spending a week away from the Lotus is just too much. I'm going to try to set my internal alarm clock for 5 am tomorrow and go for a quick blat in one of my favorite spots :-D

Blat this morning

TNAS from AHO joined me for my drive through Montejunto this morning. It was great having his company in the car, but I was mad at myself because I wasn't able to focus on the driving (same thing happened with my last pax ride there). I need to learn how to chew gum and walk at the same time :-P

The road was quite challenging today. A lot of foliage on the ground and even a dead fox, FCS! Anyway, the car still behaved like a dream and we had a great conversation about Porsches.I'll be away next weekend --- not sure if I'll be able to take the car out before that.

Next blat

I'm going to Montejunto on Saturday early morning. If anyone is up for an early breakfast of one of the greatest roads in the country, drop me a line to zjoao_mx at yahoo.com

My own rules for blats

Blats are dangerous, but they should only be dangerous for those that choose to engage in them and not for anybody else. I have four rules that I always follow in every blat to make sure that if anyone is in jeopardy because of my driving, that person is sitting behind the wheel of the most beautiful organge car in Portugal. These are my own rules, I don't think they're the best or the only ones. Just the rules I feel comfortable with.

1. On highways, stay close to the speed limit and always below 150 km/h
Driving the Lotus is all about the twisties, there's no point is paying a fine, loosing my license or putting myself and others in danger to go fast in a straight line

2. In villages and cities allways keep the speed limit

The point here is to prevent running over somebody. This is especially important in villages on mountain roads where people may be less used to cars and children are allowed to play outside.

3. In long straights keep below 100 km/h

I've learned how well the Lotus can break and this is the speed at which it is still safe to go in medium visibility. There can be children playing in the woods or people may hear / see the Lotus coming and want to come closer. Also, if something upsets the car, there's still a chance of surviving. Again the point of the car is not going fast in a straight line.


4. In the twisties, drive like a maniac just below 7/10's. This is where I really take risks because this is what this car was made for and here is the place where I'm less likely to put others in danger. Obviously the possibility is still there. At 7/10's I am really pushing the car, but I still have some leeway (not much) to improvise. This is a lesson that many of the gentlemen drivers learned in races such as Mille Miglia and that gave some an edge over the professional pilots.

Lotus meet

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 Cunha

I 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!

Check out more pics here, here, here

Pax ride / Montejunto

Had a great time this afternoon. I spent five hours driving and talking about driving with Fili, a guy that I met on AHO that asked me for a ride on the Lotus. We went to Montejunto and after a few wrong turns (you'd think a guy with a PhD from MIT would know how to read GPS instructions... doh!) we found that delicious road I posted about before. It was great, there was no traffic at all! This is a road from heaven with many twisties and long fast sweeps with great visibility and great scenery. Fili is an experienced track driver and he gave me a few great tips on drving. The gist of it was that I should not try to gradually push the car until I reach the limit. Instead I should find the limit sooner by breaking traction at low speed and catch the car. According to Fili, the ideal setting for this is an uphill quick bend tilted towards the inside of the turn. Looking forward to give that a try. We had a late lunch and talked a bit more about trackdays and how bad they have become at Estoril.

We scheduled a joint trip to Montejunto (Fili really loved those roads) with his S2000 and my Lotus. I really look forward to that :-)

Here's the map of the ride

See a pic of the road below taken from a Porsche (sorry, only pic I could find).

Flickr Lotus Photo Pool

Came across the Lotus photo pool on Flickr. Check out the great pics. The one above is the Lotus Mk II

Soptted!

A Lotus Cortina MkI and a Lotus Elan S3 Sprint in a car dealer close to my house :drool:

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Lotus Driver: A new blog

Lotus Driver is a new blog I started to hold information about Lotus cars. Most of the posts focus on a specific car and feature a smal blurb on its history, some links to historic references, links to replica makers, searches on Youtube, Google and Google Images and a price range (in Euro).

Occasionally, there are posts on some other resources for the Lotus classic car enthusiast. One of my favorites is a post with links to classis race car dealers. Check it out and pass along info or photos if you have them :-)

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