Despite weather which would have had Noah reaching for his tools the first TLF National Lotus Meet at Mercedes Benz World/Brooklands was a great success with over 130 cars and 200 people in attendance. Not letting the rain dampen our spirits the beauty of the location is that there’s plenty to do for everyone inside as well as admire the 25 car concours and single lineup of over 100 Lotus cars outside. With all of the facilities of MBW and Brooklands Museum available to visitors including the Mercedes Silver Arrows display team and driving experiences everyone had a terrific time and with the added bonus of the chance to have your car photographed with Concorde the day was packed with excitement.
For the concours the owners of he cars were also lucky enough to be treated to access to the MBW Handling Circuit for some ‘parade laps’ which seemed very spirited at times! You can view some in-car footage here and our members pictures of the event here (5 pages of them, enjoy!).  As a special treat for visitors, for the first and last time ever the first (1976) and last (2004) ever Esprits were on display inside the building. We believe this is a first for any marque or to have these 2 ‘bookends’ on display together showing the cars evolution over its 28 year production lifetime.
The concours was a tight competition with a high quality of cars and the winners were:
- Best pre-1974: Europa JPS – Geoff Morgan
- Best 1974-1996: Turbo Esprit – Jonny Pittard
- Best post-1996: Elise 111R – Phillip Pilgrim
- People’s choice award:Â Europa JPS – Geoff Morgan
- Judge’s best in show: Esprit S3 – Colin Parry
Our thanks must go to everyone who made the journey to the event, which of course made the event such a great day. With visitors such as Jukka and Sissi who drove their Evora over from Finland for the event (with their dog, Mr Chapman in the back seats!), Â Cor his son who drove their Lotus Eleven from Holland and back in a day and a dozen of our LEGS members travelling down from Scotland we even had the new owner of the last ever Lotus Esprit over with his daughter from Canada. Also a big thanks to Mercedes Bens World for hosting us, Brooklands Museum for all their help and to our many volunteers on the day. Suffice to say we’re all looking forward to next year already!
With thanks to GKP plus Andrzej and Axe from www.nineteen80one.com for the photos.
