End of the recession

Sorry for the radio silence over the last week. No parties or hot news I'm afraid. We were all just superbusy with a level of sales enquiries that takes us back to LBL (Life before Lehman).

In London we already sold out our allocation of Flex50 memberships last month and now our Half memberships allocation is getting limited - so I've now decided to call the end of the recession.

Looking forward, this week is really busy, with a Ladies' night tomorrow, TrackDay on Wednesday and Open Evening on Thursday.

In the meantime, here's a funny picture - can you spot the faux-pas? It's a bit obvious so no prizes for guessing it I'm afraid.

F1 here we come!

I am over the moon to see that not one, but two of the organisations that I have been developing close ties with over the last year have been successful in getting a slot in next year's F1 series.

First of all, the return of Lotus to F1 is great for all us Brits to be able to get behind; but since my plans for an e25 track and race series are being prepared within the Lotus racing pedigree, I am sure that all sorts of F1 collaboration opportunities will present.

A less obvious connection is with Manor GP some of whose Directors are also owners of our sister club Vitesse based in Newcastle.

Obviously it's very early days, but the opportunity to use e25's network of branches for promotions and roadshows for the various sponsors and get some VIP access for members for GPs and associated events is very exciting. I'd love to have an e25 sticker on a driver's helmet and pit lane passes for any members attending the races.

Hybrids for Beginners

On Monday night I was at a Fisker Presentation evening. Aside from meeting the man himself (designer of the DB9 amongst others), I was given an understanding of the engineering wizardry behind this car - solar panels, one speed gearbox and a haptic touchscreen display unit!?

Personally I think its the most beautiful 4-door car ever and I will definitely get one for myself AND one for the company but its worth explaining why this hybrid carries the most important powertrain innovation in over a decade.

All hybrids as we know them currently are petrol-hybrids. Ie the main source of power is the petrol engine. The battery only kicks in at extremely low power ranges to provide some zero emission mobility - useful for parking and crawling in traffic; otherwise its principally a petrol car. And of course the source of the energy for charging the batteries is petrol anyway - so it's only a mild improvement on a standard petrol car. Of course some energy is recovered during braking which also improves efficiency.

The Fisker is what is sometimes called an electric-hybrid. In this case the main powertrain is an electric motor and the car is always powered by electricity from the batteries. The magic on this type of car is that the petrol engine is only ever used to generate electricity to charge the batteries. Of course this means you don't need a very large petrol engine, and also it can operate within its optimal efficiency range at all times. Unlike a petrol-hybrid, it means that if you charge the car at least every 50 miles - sufficient for most people's daily commute - you need never use petrol at all. [Yes I appreciate the argument that the electricity has to come from somewhere and that today that is mostly fossil fuels, but at least you have a solution to the dependency on oil for mobility and then the engineers can concentrate on developing more low/zero emission energy sources for electricity.]

Anyway, I think it is a step in the right direction and I will be giving this company whatever support I can. Expect to see this car at e25 in 2010 and do let me know if you fancy buying one and putting it on the Vehicle Owner's Programme, I could probably get you a special deal.

Merci Murcie!

The Leeds branch launch event was an unmitigated success with several new members signing up on the day.

In spite of our best efforts to ensure that e25's latest and greatest was on display (California, DBS, etc) and despite being 5 years old, this bright orange Murcielago brought in by a guest was the highlight of the show! Of course, it's the scissor doors...

Dean very kindly allowed us to photograph it under the e25 banner but we can't really use it in our proper marketing unless we have it on the fleet. Of course being Orange with Black interior it is too good to resist and after several bottles of wine over dinner, Paul and I had convinced ourselves that we should buy it off him, if only for marketing purposes.

I haven't dared ask Paul since he has sobered up whether he is still interested in buying it because I fear the answer might be a yes...

More gossip about the launch event here on Pistonheads

4 wheels of a different kind

You can tell school term has started again by the huge jump in traffic on the road. I cannot really understand why kids need to be driven half a mile to school.

At least in my house we are doing our bit for the environment; after learning to pedal this Summer, Yasmin now cycles to school! What a proud father!

Leeds Branch Launch Event

This Saturday is the Launch Party for the new e25 Leeds branch.

Although the Leeds branch officially opened on August 1, the party was pushed out to September to allow for holidaymakers to get back. Its a free party and should be really cool - Paul tells me that there will be a few celebrities there but won't divulge any names. Click here for more details of how to get on the invitation list.

The photo shows me with the proprietors Paul and Karen Brown - and yes, Karen does not have any arms in real life either!

Road Rally - video

This is now up on the e25 website - hope you like it.

Would love to hear your thoughts, either here or on Pistonheads?

The next event we are doing is a track day at Silverstone on September 30th. If there is a lot of interest in this, we will plan more for next year.

15 minutes of fame

Well my last post seems to have caused a bit of a stir on Pistonheads - how ironic since one of the reasons I started my blog is because the BlogPolice at PH kept censoring my contributions to the site.

Lousy Lamborghini

For commerically sensitive reasons I have had to button my lip on this topic all Summer, but I am now free to vent to my heart's content...



Lamborghini Sucks!



These cars are not fit for purpose and a total health hazard. My sorry story with Lambo starts right at the beginning of the year when we took delivery of our shiny new LP560-4. I bought this car in the hope that a bit of Audi engineering might have made its way into it and we could look forward to a more reliable Lambo for once....wow, I could not have been more wrong.



In the first 12 weeks we had the car it broke down 8 times, and spent 7 weeks in the repair shop being fixed. About 40 customers were let down by cancelled bookings as a result of failures on the car, and resulted in over £30,000 of lost income too! In the end, Lambo gave us a brand new car, which was nice of them but did not fill me with confidence. This has been a much better car from a reliability point of view. But...



no sooner had this episode past than our Gallardo Spyder had a fire in the engine bay while a member was pulling up in a car park. Initially I thought this was just a freak incident but over time my attention has been drawn to websites such as YouTube which are littered with stories of Lamborghini's on fire, and by July another incident in Peterborough made it onto Top Gear.



And then, to add insult to injury, when a member crashed the LP560-4 in June, Lamborghini took a total of 9 weeks to get all the spare parts to the repair shop - in one instance taking 3 attempts to deliver a bonnet without a dent in it.

So in summary, we have been without our 2 Lamborghinis for most of the Summer. Obviously it has impacted our vehicle availability which has upset a ton of members, and has caused us a massive loss of income just at a time when we can least afford it....

Needless to say, these cars are just not fit for purpose! I know they are absolutely the most gorrrrgeous things on the road, and the new LP560 is without doubt the best drive ever...but if these cars cannot be relied upon to work when you actually need them to get you anywhere when you need it, what's the point? For my part, I certainly won't be bringing more Lamborghini's on to the fleet anytime soon and when there are so many great cars now coming out from Maserati, Aston Martin, Ferrari and even Nissan and Jaguar, who needs them!