All British Day 2016

A great display of British marques

Story by Chris Bray, photos by Russell Carter.

This was a rescheduled event from the previous Sunday which was cancelled due to very wet weather. We felt the overall numbers of both entrants and public were down. Probably because of the change of day. We were also missing a few members that couldn’t make the following Sunday.

For those of you that know Greg and I well, know we don’t generally ‘do’ mornings. So we were very proud of ourselves managing to get to the College Sportsground at Tennyson at 7am to set up for the Club. We could only manage to take two out of the four Lotus flags, because as with most things they wouldn’t fit in the boot of the Europa. Greg had decided to take the Europa over the Elan, because it was well overdue an outing. The only way we could manage the flags in their bags was for them to compete with me in the passenger seat so I arrived at the start of our day rather bedraggled. To upset the early birds, it was a bit chilly first thing and light rain started to spoil the beautifully polished cars. Queensland being Queensland the sky soon cleared and we had to slip, slop, slap.

As usual it was a great display of all British marques of cars, motorbikes and commercials.

We managed a turn out of 16 Lotus cars – 2 late Europas; an original Europa; 4 Elises; an Exige S, Elan, 2 Esprits, 2 Sevens, a Lotus 11, a Caterham, a Lotus Carlton and our friend’s Lotus Cortina.

Also a nice couple from the Sunshine Coast asked if they could park their smart TVR with us, as apparently they had done so before, because they were always the only TVR present. During the afternoon we spotted a nice looking white S4 Elan parked over with the MG’s, so we introduced ourselves and the Club. We found out they were new owners of the Elan and had previously owned an MG. So we hope our PR speech was good enough to promote new membership.

George Rowe was there displaying his lovely 11 and also to our great entertainment, dressed in period costume, he displayed and rode the Penny Farthing he had built, plus he also brought along his example of the Moulton bicycle.

Greg was interviewed and photos taken of his Europa by a motoring journalist working for Unique Cars magazine. Greg was told to look out for the article with photos, which will be published in the next few months.

I didn’t hear that any of our member’s cars managed to be awarded any trophies at the closing of the event. Obviously the judges need to be educated about the unique virtues of the Lotus marque.

We were the first to arrive and the last to leave, so a job done well we hope.