LEW Oxford Meet
@ Heythrop Park, Oxford
www.heythroppark.co.uk
29th June 2008

The Lotus Esprit World Oxford Meeting took place on 29th June 2008. Lotus Esprit World (“LEW”) have run these meeting for the last few years and they’ve been getting more popular every year. We our car just back from it's paint job, we were ready to show it off.

  

9am Meet at Peartree Services

      

Usual meeting place was busy with Esprits again. The weather did turn for a few minutes and our new paint job got it's first taste of rain, but luckily it wasn't long before the sun came out and we could have some outdoor fun.

Off to Heythrop Park (in different directions)

  

This was fun, as half the group got lost and ended up on a different route to Heythrop and then ended up beating the front group to the venue. Not too many pics from us, as we were lost and trying to lead a group to Heythrop! We all got there in the end!

Perfect venue for a Supercar

This is our 3rd year at Heythrop, but this year we were invited to park the Esprits at the back of the house in the amazing gardens. A perfect venue for the Esprit as you might be able to tell from the pictures. We really needed a wide-angle camera to get all the cars in.

       

Inside for a chat and feeding

With all the cars park, everyone headed inside for tea, coffee and biscuits. Once everyone was refreshed it was time to sit down and hear from our guests for the day.

   

Our first guest was Nick Fulcher from N. Fulcher Coachtrimmers, who's a lotus man through and through. Along with advice for leather care, repair and retrimming, we also heard some great stories involving Nick's work with Colin Chapman on both the first Esprit and the Delorean. Nick has also worked with Lotus' F1 Teams and brought along a few pieces from F1, which he allow people to get 'hands on' with, including Mikka's F1 Helmet, gloves and race suit.

        

The food was wonderful again, with 3-courses. Everyone seems to enjoy the choice available and the deserts looked very tempting.

   

After food it was back into our meeting room to listen to Esprit Platform Manager Brian Angus from Lotus Cars. He gave everyone a breakdown of what's happening at the factory and had been playing with the new Eagle on Friday, which will soon be unveiled at the motor show. A Q&A followed and then Bibs from LEF address the group on the Factory Day coming up in September.

Out the back!

   

With all the talking down, it was back out to enjoy the cars. Lotus had bought down there Esprit Mule, which is a yellow 1995 V8 thats had around 7 different engines in it and has been used to test alsorts of parts. There were a few carbon pieces on it that Lotus looked into developing and had been used to test the new Esprit suspension at some point. No news on that before you all want to know.

        

Those who wanted to go out on the run were lead around the Oxford countryside by Dermot in his beautiful S4. Our newly painted beast missed the run as we'd like to keep away the stone-chips for at least a few weeks, so we can enjoy our shiny skin.

   

It turn out to be one of the best meetings we've done and everyone seem to enjoy the day. At least that's what everyone told us;-)

   

Thanks to everyone who attended and especially to those who help make it the day it was.

Oxford 2008 Team

See you next time.

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