Autumn driving?

Happy Autumn! Often the best driving in Scotland is to be had at this time of year – with the crisp weather and changing colours of the trees often comes the nirvana of empty roads. However, if there has been rain, or leaf falls, or early darkness that could catch one out, the roads can also be quite treacherous as we’ve recently found to our cost.

Both the Elise and S2000 were crashed by members in the last fortnight, and in each case due to one of the above factors. So, if I could take this opportunity to urge care at this time of the year I think all members would be most grateful! The Elise seems repairable and should be ready for spring. I suspect the S2000 is a write-off though, so we’ll use the opportunity to freshen the fleet and maybe replace it with a Boxster S.

Moving onto the good news. Our investment scheme has been a resounding success – we’ve raised over £150,000 so far which means we will be buying every car on our wish list! And as the price of cars has fallen since we hatched our plan, we’ve been able to upgrade some of the cars – like a Porsche 911 (996) Turbo instead of a Carrera 4. If we get another £50,000 and we will also be looking for a Lamborghini Gallardo for investors use. If you are still musing about investing please contact me as soon as possible because at the end of this week investment year one starts, and any investment made after this will have a lock in period that ends a year after those made this week or earlier.

Whilst we have the money in the bank and could buy right now, we’ve taken the decision to wait for another month or two to see if prices do continue to fall as the economic gloom darkens with the weather. So bear with us if you are disappointed the new metal isn’t arriving quickly enough - by January and February we promise exotic cars will be appearing at a Classic Car Club near you!

In fact there have been a couple of new arrivals already – a beautiful 1992 Bentley Turbo RL (LWB & active ride) and a really cute 1958 Austin Healey 100/6. The Turbo RL will have a complete respray over the winter, and will be looking stunning by spring, and the big Healey just needs it’s hood tidying up before it too will be ready to go in spring.

We are starting to take the classics of the road for winter through November, and we will run the more modern stuff through till Monday January 5th 2009. They will then winter until Friday 13th (!!) March unless the weather is particularly bad, in which case we will delay for a week or so until the spring appears. We are aiming to have an Open Weekend to launch all the new cars on the weekend of the 28th March, so please mark that date in your diary and come along and join us.

As our fleet becomes more and more modern, it strikes me that our main reason for taking the modern cars of the road is due to our insurer. And whilst I believe that is right and fair that our insurer should decide the risk is too high for them, it also gives us an opportunity for members who are able to obtain their own insurance to take the modern cars for the whole 3 months of winter.

This is currently only an idea, so I welcome your feedback, but how much interest would there be for members to take self-insured club cars for all of 3 months from mid December to mid March for an additional payment, perhaps to be decided by auction? Currently the NSX and Maserati appear to be the best cars to test this out, but if this scheme is a success then there would be many more cars that would fit the criteria in the coming years. I welcome your feedback on this idea.

MN