The Lotus Forums received an honourable mention as runner-up ‘Club of the Year’ in this years prestigious Classic and Sports Car magazine Club Awards held at the Birmingham NEC Hilton Hotel on Friday night. The annual awards are judged by a panel from the publication and are either based on the club itself or members cars and their efforts to display them at the Footman James Classic Motor Show which has just finished at the NEC.
The awards were presented by Simon Taylor, a motoring journalist with 40 years experience who devised ‘What Car?’ magazine, went on to become Chairman of Haymarket Magazines and is Editor at Large of Classic & Sports Car. He said:
To qualify for this award, you need a consistent presence during the year. And you can’t get more all-pervading than the internet, which is where our runner-up exists. The Lotus Forums receives more than 50,000 visits and serves up around 300,000 web pages per month. In the eight years that the club has been running, it has gained almost 12,000 registered members.
‘Our winner, though, has had a fantastic year, too, and scoops the award for a range of nominations. Its successful National Rally, which this year was jointly run by two of its regions, was a contender the Run or Rally prize – as were the people who tirelessly organise it. The club’s bimonthly magazine has also had a change of editor at short notice and been significantly improved, another leading contender for that award. And we’ve also heard about the club’s wonderful Jubilee Tour of Britain, which took in some of the National Trust’s finest properties en route. It’s also a marque that, for C&SC, generated lots of interest when we gathered four generations of its cars to celebrate its glorious past earlier this year.
‘Club of the Year goes to the Wolseley Register.’
Categories and winners are:
BEST CLUB WEBSITE – TVR Car Club at www.tvrcc.com
MOST IMPROVED CLUB MAGAZINE – Tailgate, Woodie Car Club, edited by Colin Peck
CLUB MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR – Champ World, Austin Champ Owners’ Club, edited by Andrew Wardle
BEST CLUB RUN/RALLY – Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run
BEST CLUB SHOW/EVENT – International Citroën Car Clubs Rally: Citroën Car Club, Traction Owners’ Club and 2CVGB
MOST INTERESTING SELECTION OF CARS – (Inter)national Micro Car Rally
BEST THEMED CLUB STAND – Riley RM Club
BEST SMALL CLUB STAND – Morris Commercial Club
BEST MEDIUM CLUB STAND – Traction Owners’ Club
BEST LARGE CLUB STAND – Veteran Car Club
C&SC SPECIAL AWARD – (for the car that stole the judges’ hearts) David Hanks’ 1934 Hillman Aero Minx Streamliner
CAR OF THE SHOW – Tom Rollason’s 1939 Aston Martin Atom
CLUB OF THE YEAR – Wolseley Register
CLUB PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR – Keith Clements, Jowett Car Club
TLF had a jubilee themed stand this year at the show which attracted a record number of visitors. Our selection of cars included a red Elan +2, various Esprits (white S2, azure blue V8-SE, white S4s and heavily modified red SE) and a future classic in the shape of the fully race prepped Exige S2 in red, white and blue. Out fifth year at the show, we welcomed visitors who travel from around the world and enjoyed chatting Lotus with what must have been thousands of people over the 3 day event. Thanks from TLF to the people who gave us their cars and time to help out and to our visitors from coming to say hello, a bumper year
and more great publicity for classic and future classic Lotus cars.
